FOR HER FRIENDS AND MINE 



FOR HER FRIENDS AND MINE: 



A Book °f Aspirations, Dreams 
and Memories 



BY 
ERWIN Fv SMITH 



PRINTED PRIVATELY 

Washington. D. C. 

1915 









l^i^^Ulc^/A^ U^spA-^- tf 




%. -?. s 









aper of which this is 
No.-ZA 



Five hundred and ten copies of this book have been printe* 
on Italian hand-made paper of which this is 



or-w+u. 




Press of Gibson Bros.. Inc. 
Washington, D. C. 



' .•' 



3 
l 17 






IN MEMORY OF 

CHARLOTTE MAY BUFFETT 

Sometime Wife of 

ERWIN F. SMITH 



Born: October 8, 1871, 

Cleveland, Ohio 

Married: April 13, 1893, 

Easton, Maryland 

Died: December 28, 1906, 

Washington, D. C. 



For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! — Keats. 

God hath her with Himself eternally, 
Yet she inhabits every hour with thee. 

— Cino da Pisloia (Rossetti's translation). 

Ce que l'homme ici-bas appelle le genie, 

C'est le besoin d'aimer; hors de la tout est vain. 

— Alfred de Musset. 




"The sea she loved makes music here alway, 
Repeating loud or low, and night and day, 
Its world-old song of change, and then of sleep!" 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 





PAGE. 


Proem, 


16 


Note, . 


'7 


Baracoa, 


47 


Naples, 


51 


In Memoriam, 


55 



ODES AND SONGS. 

Fortitude, 61 

The Bells of Santo Spirito 62 

Cienfuegos, 70 

On the Blue Sea 75 

A Summer Song, 77 

A Child's Song, 79 

First Day Out, 80 

Nightfall, 81 

Fair Weather, 82 

Midnight, 83 

Innisfree, 84 

A Love Song, 85 

SONNETS. 

I. Music at Home 89 

II. The Love of Art, 90 

III. Summer Seas, 91 

IV. Evenings with Books, 92 

V. Robert Louis Stevenson, 93 

VI. Confucius, 94 

VII. Dead Loves, 95 

VIII. Migratory Birds, 96 

IX. Her Grave and Mine: September, 97 

X. An Autumn Storm, 98 

XI to XIV. Baracoa: 1904, 99-102 

XV. Remembrance, 103 

XVI. Her Grave and Mine: Morning and Evening, . . . 104 

XVII. The Old Faith and the New, 105 

XVIII. Beethoven (I) 106 

9 



PAGE 

XIX. Beyond, 107 

XX. Thomas Carlyle, 108 

XXI. Jane Welsh Carlyle, 109 

XXII. The Two Multitudes, no 

XXIII. Mata Harbor, m 

XXIV. April Days, ii 2 

XXV. The Graveyard at Mata, n 3 

XXVI. On Reading Pierre Loti's Pecheur d'Islande, . . 114 

XXVII. Baracoa (V), n 5 

XXVIII. Insomnia, . 116 

XXIX. The Early Light, 117 

XXX. Purity, 118 

XXXI. The Dark Shadow, n 9 

XXXII. Strange Pets, 12 o 

XXXIII. Summer Polk, 121 

XXXrV Woods Hole, 122 

XXXV. Grace and Beauty, 123 

XXXVI. The Nobska Shore, 124 

XXXVII. The Hidden Truth, 125 

XXXVIII. Slaughter of Jews in Russia, 126 

XXXIX. The Earth Mother, 127 

XL. Edwin Booth's Room at the Players' Club, . . 128 

XLI. Spring at Elmwood, 129 

XLII. The Distant Airship, 130 

XLIII. Immanuel Kant, 131 

XLIV. Walden Pond, . 132 

XLV. Meissonier's Cavalier, 133 

XLVI. Beethoven (II), 134 

XLVII. Compassion, 135 

XLVIII. The Bride of the Sea, 136 

XLIX. Wedded Life, 137 

L. Her Face, 138 

LI. Her Grave and Mine: November, .... 139 

LIL De Profundis, 140 

LIII. The Divine Love, 141 

LIV. Victor Hugo, 142 

LV. Louisa May Alcott, 143 

LVI. Ralph Waldo Emerson, 144 

LVII. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 145 

LVIII. Halley's Comet, 146 

LIX. Dante, 147 

LX. Dante in Ravenna, 148 

LXI. Swedenborg, 149 

LXII. The Fellowship of Saints, 150 

10 



PAGE 

LXIII. Day-Dreams, 151 

LXIV. Penzance, 152 

LXV. The Wet Street, 153 

LXVI. Mutability (I), 154 

LXVII. Buddha: A Prayer, 155 

LXVIII. Hawthorne's Hillside Walk, 156 

LXDC. After Reading Frederic Harrison, 157 

LXX. April XIII, 158 

LXXI. Eastertide, 159 

LXXII. The Arctic Night, 160 

LXXIII. To Marie Bashkirtseff, 161 

LXXIV. God and the Universe, 162 

LXXV. Theodore Parker, 163 

LXXVI. The Bridal May, 164 

LXXVII. Influence, 165 

LXXVIII. Homer, 166 

LXXIX. An August Night (I), 167 

LXXX. A Summer Lansdcape, 168 

LXXXI. Circe, 169 

LXXXII. Goethe when Old, 170 

LXXXIII. The Dead City, 171 

LXXXI V. Rain on the Roof, . . . . . . . . 172 

LXXXV. The Harmonies of Life, 173 

LXXXVI. The Universal God, 174 

LXXXVII. Late Autumn in Washington, 175 

LXXXVIII. A Cuban Valley, 176 

LXXXDC. Yumurl Gorge, 177 

XC. Spinoza, 178 

XCI. The Sabbath Before the Passover, . . . . 179 

XCII. Vesuvius, 180 

XCIII. The Mystery of Life, 181 

XCIV. Keats, 182 

XCV. Shelley's Grave, 183 

XCVI. The Dead Poet, 184 

XCVII. Tolstoi when Old 185 

XCVIII. Jesus, 186 

XCIX. Science, 187 

C. Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani 188 

CI. (See Proem) 

CII. Compensation, 189 

OIL A Child's Spirit, 190 

CIV. Poesy, 191 

CV. The Body of God, 192 

CVI. Henrietta Retian 193 

11 



PAGE 

CVII. The Nile, 194 

CVIII. Ygdrasil, 195 

CIX. The Twilight of the Gods, 196 

CX. Paestum, 197 

CXI. An August Night (II) 198 

CXII. Self-Renunciation, . . ... . . . . 199 

CXIII. Prayers for the Dead, ....... 200 

CXIV. The Epic Muse, 201 

CXV. Motherhood, 202 

CXVI. Race Hatred, 203 

CXVII. Old Letters, 204 

CXVIII. Sea-Gardens, 205 

CXIX. The Hemlocks of My Boyhood, 206 

CXX. The Shining Ones, 207 

CXXI. Chopin, 208 

CXXII. The Palace of Tears 209 

CXXIII. April at Woods Hole, - 210 

CXXIV. Robert Browning 211 

CXXV. Richard Wagner's Autobiography, . . . . 212 

CXXVI. A Vase of Opal Glass, 213 

CXXVII. Beyond Posilipo, 214 

CXXVIII. Fields and Woods, 215 

CXXIX. Frederick W. Robertson, 216 

CXXX. Reminiscence (Ed. Remenyi), 217 

CXXXI. De Imitatione Christi, 218 

CXXXII. The Apennines, 219 

CXXXIII. Fog on Shore, 220 

CXXXrV. Fog at Sea (I), 221 

CXXXV. Mystic and Half Mystic, 222 

CXXXVI. The Geological Record, 223 

CXXXVII. Companionship, 224 

CXXXVIII. Wordsworth, 225 

CXXXIX. George Gissing, 226 

CXL. The Western Alps from Varese, 227 

CXLL Winter Days, 228 

CXLII. First Love, 229 

CXLIII. Sur "L'Intime" de Pierre Lenoir, 230 

CXLIV. Persephone, 231 

CXLV. Ideals, 232 

CXLVI. On the Kahlenberg, 233 

CXLVII. The Sonnets of Heredia, 234 

CXLVIII. The Wind Harp, 235 

CXLIX. The Sleep of Plants, 236 

CL. The Vegetarian, 237 

CLI. The Darwinian, . 238 

12 



PAGE 

CLII. April in the North, 239 

CLIII. My Mother's Garden, 240 

CLIV. Graves near Baltimore 241 

CLV. The Avon, 242 

CLVI. Evangeline, 243 

CLVII. To Gutzon Borglura, 244 

CLVIII. Catullus, 245 

CLIX. June, ■ .... 246 

CLX. Da Vinci, 247 

CLXI. Sister Joseph, 248 

CLXII. Grant's Point, Oronoco, Minn 249 

CLXIII. My Church, 250 

CLXIV. Jane and Thomas 251 

CLXV. Tintagel, 252 

CEXVI. Richard Jefferies, 253 

CLXVII. Beethoven (III) 254 

CLXVIII. Baudelaire, 255 

CLXIX. Moliere, 256 

CLXX. Richard Wagner 257 

CLXXI. The Poet, 258 

CLXXII. II Cinquecento, 259 

CLXXIII. Alpenlander, 260 

CLXXrV. SanRemo, 261 

CLXXV. Transmutation, 262 

CLXXVI. Minerva: A prayer, 263 

CLXXVII. (See L'envoi), 

CLXXVIII. The Pessimists, 264 

CLXXIX. To Margery, 265 

CLXXX. Helen B 266 

CLXXXI. Stonehenge (I) 267 

CLXXXII. The Valley of the Danube 268 

CLXXXIII. Stonehenge (II), 269 

CLXXXIV. Entombment of Christ 270 

CLXXXV. Milton, England and Liberty, 271 

CLXXXVI. Nature and God, 272 

CLXXXVII. Three Voices out of the Past and an Answer, . 273 

CLXXXVIII. The Far East, 274 

CLXXXIX. The Art of Healing 275 

CXC. Alfoxden Wood, 276' 

CXCI. Shelley's Italy 277 

CXCII. Mutability (II), 278 

CXCIII. Cenacolo Vinciano, 279 

CXCIV. For a Place in the Sun 280 

CXCV. A Snow Storm in the Woods 281 

CXCVI. Scandal, 282 

CXCVII. Vastness, 283 

13 



TRANSLATIONS. 

From the German. 

PAGE 

I. A May Song — Goethe, 293 

II. The Godlike— Goethe, 295 

III. The Powers Above Us — Goethe, . . . . . 298 

IV. The Wanderer's Night Song — Goethe, .... 299 
V. A Fragment — Goethe, ' . 300 

VI. Farewell to Life — Koerner, 301 

VII. The Dead Maiden— Uhland, 302 

VIII. Lotus-Love — Heine, 303 

IX. May-time — Heine, 304 

X. A Dead Love — Heine, 305 

XI. Twilight— Heine, 306 

XII. Luck in Love — Heine, 308 

XIII. Philosophy — Heine, 309 

XIV. A Dream — Heine, 310 

XV. The Devil — Heine, 313 

XVI. A Warning — Heine, 314 

XVII. Night Thoughts— Heine, 315 

XVIII. The Weavers — Heine, 317 

XIX. Poesie — Kerner, 319 

XX. The Heart — Neumann, ■ . . 320 

XXI. The Human Will— Hammer, 321 

XXII. The Heart's Answer — Halm, 322 

XXIII. Co-workers with God — Spitta, 323 

XXIV. At Sea— Griin, 324 

XXV. The Water Lily— Geibel, 326 

XXVI. I Sailed From St. Goar— Geibel, 327 

XXVII. The Gipsy Boy in the North— Geibel, .... 329 

XXVIII. The Forest— Ambrosius, 332 

XXIX. First Love — Ambrosius, 333 

XXX. Home Coming — Ambrosius, 334 

XXXI. Womanhood — Rodenberg, 335 

XXXII. Madchenlied — Nietzsche, 336 

From the French and Italian. 

XXXIII. The Antique Medal — Heredia, 341 

XXXIV. Michael Angelo — Heredia, 34 2 

XXXV. Oblivion— Heredia, 343 

XXXVI. Stoicism— Menard, 344 

XXXVII — XXXIX. The Vision of Khem— Heredia, . 345-347 

XL. May- time — Marradi, 348 

14 



PAGE 

XLI. For Helen — Ronsard, 349 

XLII. Marsyas — Heredia, 350 

XLIII. Sur le livre des Amours de Pierre de Ronsard — Heredia . 35 1 

XLIV. Gilded Vellum— Heredia, 352 

XLV. The Conch— Heredia, 353 

XLVI. A Gothic Window — Heredia, 354 

XL VII. A Rising Sea— Heredia, 355 

XLVIII. May-time in Florence — Marradi, 356 

XLIX. The Spring — Heredia, 357 

L. The Athlete— Menard 358 

LI. Homer — Carducci, . . 359 

LII. Virgil — Carducci, 360 

LIII. Alastor — Menard, 361 

LIV. Erinnyes — Menard, 362 

LV. Dante — Carducci 363 

LVI. The Gulf— Baudelaire, 364 

LVII. To Dante Alighieri — Michael Angelo, .... 365 

LVIII. The Abyss— Victor Hugo, 367 

L'envoi 379 



TEXT CUTS. 

PAGE 

The Vanishing Sail . 46 

Baracoa Harbor, April, 1904 50 

Eruption of Vesuvius, April 8, 1906 54 

Sunset 58 

A farm on the Vesuvian plain after the lava flow of 1906 . . 86 

Harbor Entrance at Baracoa — "The ocean thunders at her doors" 284 

The Eel Pond at Woods Hole 288 

A Corner of the Golf Links at Woods Hole 292 

The Buoy Station on Little Harbor at Woods Hole . . . . 338 
Fishing Boats on Little Harbor — in the background, at the right, her 

favorite bank and pine tree 340 

Racing Boats on Little Harbor at Woods Hole 366 

Fog at Sea 37 8 

The Nobska Shore 380 



15 



PROEM. 

My words are bubbles tossed from spirit wells; 
Thin cupfuls dipped from ocean's sounding shore 
And as libation poured, forevermore, 
To one who now within the silence dwells; 
Thin strains that tell, but as faint echo tells, 
The world of song, in joy and sorrow heard, 
Ringing within me clear as song of bird, 
Or notes of deep-toned vibrant golden bells. 

Yet bubbles oft do mirror heaven's blue, 
How fugitive soe'er their colors are, 
And echo's faintest cry borne from afar, 

Oft thrills the soul with days forgotten long 
But loved full well : so may my rhymes in you 
Find echo, stirring deeps of spirit song! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, January 28, 191 2. 
16 



NOTE. 

I would present a luminous and beautiful personality so 
vividly that it shall live again in those who knew it once, and 
shall become alive to kindred souls who meet it here for the 
first time. Vain effort, I fear: human nature is so large, life 
touches life at so many points, and words are so elusive. This 
is a book about a woman, and written principally for women 
(her friends and mine). I doubt if any man cares much about 
it unless he is a poet, or a lover, or some old man dreaming of 
days that come not again, except in dreams. 

Of all the women I have known and reverenced, this woman 
best satisfied my ideals, and of all her traits that which deepest 
impressed itself upon me was her divine simplicity, a character- 
istic of all really great souls. This spiritual loveliness which 
she possessed in no small measure is so precious an inheritance 
that for the joy of the world I would make her portion of it 
known more widely and a longer time, in the spirit of one who 
sings heart songs, gives flowers, paints beautiful pictures, carves 
marble into forms of lasting delight, or simply offers the cup of 
cold water to him who is thirsty. 

Her life was a simple and quiet life. It is interesting not for 
what it accomplished in concrete measurable products, but for 
what it was as a spiritual development. She excelled in clear 
seeing and right thinking, in high ideality and pure devotion to 
truth. Her unselfish love shone always as a clear flame. 

The world is not yet so full of the best things that there is not 
room for more, and of all things love is best. It is blossom and 
fruit of the tree of life. The man who has not plucked it and 
eaten and been lifted out of himself and up to the level of the 
gods is still in his sins. Let him cry mea culpa and ask to be 
forgiven, not of God, but of womankind. Next to love stands 
memory, and the record of love. 

17 



So I shall write briefly and frankly, as best I can, the simple 
story of one who was dear, and of whom might have been said 
that which Hugo says of the blind girl, Dea: C'etait une nature 
rare. * * * Le corps Stait fragile, le coeur non. Ce qui etait 
le fond de son itre, c'etait une divine perseverance d' amour. 

This book is a cycle of my life — seven lonely years are in it. 
The long ode (on page 62) is a cry of pain. It is so intimate that 
I was tempted at times to leave it out, but could not finally 
decide to do so, because other verses also, especially many of the 
sonnets, are intimate, and if I began to discard there appeared 
to be no good place to stop, and because an author is not always 
the best judge of his own work. Often what seemed to me good 
at first became uncertain. Indeed, many times I have been dis- 
posed to suppress all of these verses, especially after enjoying 
the noble diction of the great poets, but in the end I decided 
to publish all, particularly as the judgment of critical friends 
to whom I showed them differed widely as to which were most 
interesting. Nothing has been more illuminating to me than 
these varying judgments. 

The sonnets in particular have been a labor of love. They 
were begun without any notion of what they would grow to. 
After a time, I thought that possibly I might succeed in writing 
as many as thirty-five, one for each year of her life — these to 
portray only certain salient phases of her spirit. Eventually, 
it seemed to me that I might express in this form her whole 
intellectual life and my own, especially those ideas and feelings 
we shared in common. With this end in view I jotted down 
several hundred titles of things most interesting to us and, as 
the sonnets took form, erased from my sheets one title after 
another, but as often added others, so that I did not seem to 
get any nearer to the end. 

Of late it has become increasingly evident, owing to the scant 
time at my disposal for literary work, that the scheme cannot 

18 



be carried out, and perhaps it is better that it should not be, 
since a part of a thing is very often much better than the whole. 
There can be no harm, however, in giving the titles of those that 
remain scrappy or unwritten, as an indication of our likes and 
dislikes, and also as a sort of supplementary confession of faith, 
curious in some respects, I am aware, for a scientific man to 
make. Nevertheless, I have no apologies to offer, literature, 
philosophy and art being quite as interesting to me as science, 
and also in my judgment quite as useful to the higher interests 
of the world. Each has its own place and marches under its 
own banner. Eventually all may be expected to reach the 
same camp. Those who are not interested may skip my cata- 
logue of ships. 

The translations, particularly those from the German, have 
also a personal interest not apparent on the surface, since most 
of them are poems we read together in the original, many times 
over, especially those of Heine. 

The photograph prepared by Mr. Edmonston is an enlarge- 
ment of one I made of her at the sea shore in the summer of 1903 
and is very characteristic both in pose and expression. 

It was my intention to put into type a prose sketch of her 
life, but the verse has crowded it out. The reader, however, 
may like to have the appended pages of memoranda and also 
this brief judgment of her character written by me in the sum- 
mer following her death, and engraved on the back of the bronze 
bust of her made by Mr. U. S. J. Dunbar, the sculptor: 

A large, compassionate soul, patient and brave; self -forget- 
ful, self-reliant, slow to anger; loyal, companionable; sweet and 
gracious in all her ways; a skilled house- wife, fond of her own 
home and the still inner life; devoted to music and art, to lan- 
guages and literature; a lover of Nature and of all noble and 
beautiful things; endowed with a large sense of humor; a keen 
observer; kind to animals, greatly interested in their habits; 

19 



forgiving easily all vices of human weakness ; resenting bitterly 

all deliberate cruelty and injustice. "Earth changes, but thy 

soul and God stand sure." 

The following outlines were designed to form the basis of the 

prose sketch. 

Ancestry. French Huguenot and English. Father: Dr. Lewis 
Buffett (183 7-1 901). Mother: Anna Virginia Perry (1836- 
1882). Brother: Norman P. Buffett. Both father and 
mother were born near Troy, N. Y. 

Early Life. Cleveland, Ohio. Easton, Maryland. Influence 
of the Case Library. Farm life in Maryland. Mother 
died early. Lonely repressed life after this. Few girl 
friends. Equable disposition. 

Married Life. Housekeeping. Marketing. Cuisine. Marri- 
age was for her the entrance into a new and rich life. We 
were well-mated and never had any disputes. She was not 
cold or formal or lacking in sensibility, but she had great 
and very unusual control over her feelings. I never saw 
her angry but once, and only once before her last illness did 
I see her shed tears. Then she was tortured with inter- 
costal rheumatism and every breath was a knife-thrust. 
The fierce and blazing anger was at a man cruelly beating 
an overloaded horse, and it was effective. 

Love of Music. Very great, especially for Beethoven. She 
played mostly what is called classical music. Many of her 
sentiments and emotions found expression in the music of 
the great masters. 

Love of Books. The books we read together: Dramatists, 
poets, novelists, essayists — Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, 
Browning, Schiller, Goethe, Heine, Wordsworth, Shelley, 
Keats, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Matthew Arnold, 
German lyric poets, Theocritus, Homer, and many more. 
She took great delight in Charles Lamb; Dickens was her 
favorite novelist (mine also) ; Epictetus her beloved Greek. 
Longfellow and Washington Irving were favorites of her 
girlhood. In later life, Heine and Robert Browning were 
her best loved poets. She thought Browning more spirit- 



ually robust than Tennyson. At the theater she did not 
like to hear tragedy. It made her too sad, she said. Fond 
of folklore. Eager to read about old Egypt. 

School Training. This was limited to the high school. Eatin 
and Greek: scanty. 

Modem Languages. Great facility in their acquisition. German 
readings with me. French, ditto. Italian readings. The 
year following her marriage she read all of Grimm's Maer- 
chen (700 pages) three times: first, alone, then with me, 
then once more to fix the idioms and new words. This was 
her first attempt at German. After that she was able to 
read anything and did read many things, novels, poems, 
plays. 

Manual Dexterity. Piano; needle work; basket work. Never 
had any art training yet made all her own designs. She 
had short fingers but played the piano very well, though 
scarcely ever in public. 

Love of Nature and the Beautiful. Delicate touch and keen 
audition. Eye for color and form. Love of the open air: 
field, forest, sky, open water, sunrise and sunset. The flash 
of lightning, the sound of rain on the roof, the noise of wind 
among the branches, the wailing of the sea, all spoke to 
her unutterable things. She was fond of art and eager to 
see Italy, especially the galleries of the old masters. With 
this end in view she had read widely on the history of art. 
Her tastes were simple. She thought that we over decorate 
our homes and that the Japanese idea of simplicity in 
household decoration is nearer right. In figure and move- 
ment she was very graceful. People frequently turned to 
look at her. She sometimes made her own clothes, and 
often made and decorated her own hats because she could 
not find beautiful combinations in the shops. She thought 
the usual dressmaker and milliner very destitute of ideas 
and good taste, and that there ought to be a fine opening 
in these trades for women who have a true feeling for 
harmony of colors, and some sense of the eternal fitness of 



things. Often she said: If I were left alone to earn my 
livelihood, I would try this. She dressed simply and 
harmoniously, and loved beautiful and simple adornments. 
Her face suggested Mary Anderson's. 

Scientific Side. Phenomenal powers of observation. Interested 
not in structure or classification, but only or chiefly in the 
habits of animals : spiders, bees, wasps, ants, reptiles, birds, 
quadrupeds ; ant battles and slave raids, nesting habits and 
nuptial flights ; habits of solitary bees and of solitary wasps ; 
spiders weaving webs, capturing prey; songs of birds, 
nesting habits, feeding of the young, migrations. She was 
less interested in plants. Note-taking irksome. Rarely 
did she record what she saw. 

Kindness to Animals. This was almost Buddhistic but not 
wholly consistent since she ate sparingly of animal food. 
Great love for horses and dogs. Lost dogs. Tired horses. 
Stray cats. Often I have seen her stop to pet and say a 
kind word to some forlorn horse or dog or cat and always 
the animal responded. Her father taught her to love all 
dumb things. Not an anti-vivisectionist — too level-headed 
and intelligent. She understood very well what the earnest 
experimenter is trying to do for afflicted humanity, and also 
for the domestic animals. 

Sense of Humor. Very keen. If there was a comical side to a 
situation she always saw it. A large, tolerant, sympathetic 
spirit. Very generous. Very considerate. Never sarcastic. 
Never cynical. 

Love for Children, and the Poor and Oppressed. The mother 
heart was strong in her, but no children were born. Always 
she had sympathy for the poor, the unfortunate, and the 
aged. Her chief regret was that she had not been able to 
reach and help more people. Once she said: I think our 
lives are too selfish. All sorts of people interested her. In 
Italy the peasants loved her. 

Social Side. Few friends, but good ones. The Reading Circle. 
The Eistophos Club. Quiet raillery at the clamorous news- 



paper- and club-woman forever seeking notoriety. She had 
a gentle winning voice, but was taciturn rather than loqua- 
cious. The passionate outcry of women for their "rights," 
of which we hear so much in these days, passed over her 
head like a confused clamor of cranes, a noise devoid of 
sense. She seemed to think her sisters of this type desti- 
tute of humor, as indeed many of them are, or they would 
not make such spectacles of themselves. We went out but 
little in the later years, owing partly to the increasing 
weakness of her heart, and partly also to my absorption in 
scientific work, but the house was always open to our 
friends, and many were the delightful little gatherings we 
had, especially on Sunday evenings. Generally we had a 
supper and then readings from the poets. Her quaint and 
original way of saying things riveted attention. When we 
were alone one or the other often read aloud. 

Ethics and Religion. Many talks on man's nature and destiny 
in the still watches of the night when we could not sleep. 
Her agnosticism. Her charity towards views with which 
she had no sympathy. She disliked disputes and was often 
silent under great provocation, lest her plainly spoken 
words should give pain to the weaker brother or sister. 
Very few of her acquaintances knew what she really thought. 
Self reliant. Philosophy of life: stoic. Endurance of 
physical pain: very great. Prayer: An outreaching, sym- 
pathetic, helpful life is the best prayer, and this she prayed 
daily and continuously. She seldom read the Bible and 
had no church affiliation. We undertook to read together 
the Prophet Jeremiah, as literature, but she voted him a 
great bore, and I believe we did not get any farther with 
the Prophets, although I had a feeling that she might have 
liked Isaiah. 

The Life to Come. Our doubts. She often said : If there is any 
life after death, I believe we shall begin it as the little child 
begins this life, groping about and becoming acquainted 
first with this and then with that new wonderful thing. 

23 



Last Days. Throughout her last illness which continued for 
eight months, confining her most of the time to her bed, her 
fortitude and patience were very great. Messages from 
the sick bed to her friends. Her thoughtfulness for her 
friends, even when dying. When we discovered and I 
told her that she had endocarditis with a streptococcal 
infection of the blood-stream, her first thought was not of 
herself but of her Italian friends. She feared lest they 
should have contracted the disease from her, by way of 
fleas which infested Varese, where she was ill for a long 
time, and great was her relief when I told her I did not 
think it possible and gave my reasons. When on the morn- 
ing of the last day I said to her that she must die, she re- 
plied, thinking no doubt of the infinite pain and weariness 
of it all, "I hope I shall die soon." These were the only 
words of repining I heard. 
In that dark hour I cheered her as best I could, bidding her 

hold out patiently and bravely to the very end, reading to her 

Browning's Prospice, Milton's sonnet On his blindness, and 

from her beloved Epictetus these words : 

"Even as in a sea voyage, when the ship is brought to anchor, and you 
go out to fetch in water, you make a by-work of gathering a few roots and 
shells by the way, but have need ever to keep your mind fixed on the ship, 
and constantly to look round, lest at any time the master of the ship call, 
and you must, if he call, cast away all those things, lest you be treated like 
the sheep that are bound and thrown into the hold: So it is with human life 
also. And if there be given wife and children instead of shells and roots, 
nothing shall hinder us to take them. But if the master call, run to the 
ship, forsaking all those things, and looking not behind. And if thou be 
in old age, go not far from the ship at any time, lest the master should call, 
and thou be not ready." 

And later when I spoke to her of God and repeated the lord's 
Prayer with her, she said: "I trust Him." She was conscious 
to the very end and these were almost her last words. These, 
and the difficultly whispered name of a dear friend with the one 
added word — "love!" 

There was nothing selfish or petty in this woman's soul and 
to share her life as I did for thirteen years, was to dwell con- 
tinuously in the temple of God! 

24 



A few of the above topics being partly written out, may be 
given here for what they are worth. 

Charlotte May Buffett was a slender, delicate child, rather 
reserved and shy, much given to the reading of books, and often 
to be found in the children's room of the Case Library, in Cleve- 
land, deep in some beautiful treasure. Often she spoke to me 
of this library and the delightful hours she had spent in it. 

A long and severe arthritis when she was a small girl left her 
with a weak heart and stiffened joints, but her good father 
patiently massaged her until finally she recovered entirely the 
use of her limbs, yet the heart injury remained. She had, 
therefore, throughout life, in whatever she did, to consider 
whether her weak heart would permit it. 

The girl and her father were alike in many ways, and were 
very intimate during these early formative years. He taught 
her many interesting and useful things. From him she inherited 
or acquired broad and tolerant sympathies, and especially a 
great fondness for animals. He taught her to observe natural 
objects closely and to reflect on what she saw. The house was 
always full of pets of one sort or another, often queer ones, e. g., 
small alligators. After her marriage we had in the house a wild 
alley cat, a pair of green lizards, a small snapping turtle, two 
rabbits (my weakness), various fledgling birds, several Australian 
grass-parrakeets, some Cuban lightning beetles (until the supply 
of sugar cane gave out), and a nest of ants. 

Her father must also have shaped her reading, more or less. 
She read a great deal in those early years, and generally of the 
best. 

Early also that rhythmic grace, peculiar to her, began to find 
its natural expression in music. Under good teachers she 
became devoted to the piano, playing the things she liked with 
sure touch and much feeling. Here also the things she liked 

25 



were the best things. She often spoke very kindly of her 
Cleveland music teacher, a woman whose name I have forgotten. 

Attendance at school seems to have been rather desultory, 
being broken more or less by illness during those Cleveland years. 
Summers, the family went into the country, which was her 
supreme delight. Here were woods, and a lake, and all sorts 
of interesting things to see and do, especially animals to be 
observed. She finished the grammar school in Cleveland, I 
believe, and afterwards had three years or thereabouts of a 
classical course in the high school in Easton, Maryland. The 
fourth year's work was dropped by the advice of her father on 
account of delicate health. During these years she read some 
Latin, and a little Greek, and much English literature. She 
did not like mathematics. 

Her Maryland years from 16 to 22 were spent on the Miles 
River farm, where I first met her. They were lonely years 
which did much to mature her mind and fix her character. 
Congenial companions were few and her home life unhappy. 
She was thrown back, therefore, very much on herself and what 
she could get out of books, music, and nature. 

The amusements on the Miles River farm were not very 
numerous or exciting. Sometimes friends came from a distance 
to break the monotony of the daily life, or from the village, or 
from other country houses, but the nearest of the latter were a 
mile or more away, and the isolation was very real. Indoor she 
assisted in the housekeeping, and in the entertainment of guests, 
and there was little time left for music or books. Indeed, most 
of her reading was done at night after she had gone to her room 
and was supposed to be in bed. Out of door, in addition to the 
care of young lambs, chickens, and turkeys, there were wide 
fields for rambling, and the broad tide-water river for sailing. 
Inshore were oyster beds and a bathing beach. 

26 



In these years she communed much with her own spirit, read 
avidly in books and in the greater book of Nature. 

Of well-thumbed volumes that were her own and which she 
brought away with her on her marriage, I recall as specially 
characteristic of her: Grove's Dictionary of Music, the novels of 
Dickens, Emerson's Essays, and the poems of Milton, Poe, 
Longfellow, Bryant and Lowell. Bulfinch's Age of Fable had 
also made a deep impression on her spirit, and to the end of her 
life she was always a fascinated and eager student of myths 
and folk-lore. 

Her visual powers were remarkable. They far exceeded my 
own. Out of doors her keen eyes were always prying into the 
habits of all sorts of living things: ants, spiders, bees, wasps, 
fish, birds, cats, dogs. Had she cared for classification, which 
she did not, and been willing to make careful records, she might 
have become an expert naturalist. Form in nature seemed to 
interest her little, or at least comparative studies of form. 
What did interest her tremendously was the grade of intelligence 
manifested in the lower forms of life. She would spend hours 
watching the habits of birds and insects, and never without 
discovering new and interesting things. Whether she looked 
into the tops of the tallest trees, or the bottom of a stream, or 
the grass at her feet, she was always finding marvels of adapta- 
tion to wonder at, and links binding the world of life into a golden 
whole. She made lists of all the birds that visited her neigh- 
borhood. She knew most of them by their songs, and some- 
times distinguished individuals of the same species by little 
differences in their notes, as once a song-sparrow at Woods Hole, 
which had two added notes. She knew when they nested and 
where, how they made their nests, and what food they brought 
to their young. In studying birds she used an opera glass, not 
a shotgun. She was, however, a very good shot with the 

revolver. 

27 



One summer on our hillside in some young locust trees, a pair 
of yellow-billed cuckoos built their nest very close to our windows 
and a little lower so that she could see all the housekeeping 
operations. Two eggs were laid and one bird was grown and 
out of the nest before the other was half fledged. 

In our dooryard she discovered a battle of ants which raged 
furiously for three days with one day's intermission during 
which they carried off the dead. This was the only battle of ants 
we ever saw. But every year upon the sidewalks about town 
we saw ants in swarming masses big as the crown of one's hat. 
These ants held each other by the jaws and were pushing and 
pulling but seemed to be at play. Their Olympic games, per- 
haps. Another year she discovered a small ant that harvested 
dandelion seeds, and carried them underground, the slender 
pappus of the seed waving above the head of the ant like a 
parasol. 

At Woods Hole she came running in breathlessly one day to 
tell me she had discovered a raid of slave-making ants. A nest 
of some red ant was raiding the nest of a larger but timid black 
ant. I went out with her and we watched the proceedings the 
rest of the afternoon. The raiders in large numbers formed two 
narrow columns each a few inches wide, one going to the nest 
of the other species, empty-mouthed, the other returning with 
eggs, larvae, pupae, and mature ants, all carried very gently and 
without resistance on the part of the black species. We traced 
them a distance of perhaps 10 or 12 rods across a road, under an 
old stone wall, and through the tangled grass to an abandoned 
tennis court where they went into the ground, the whole surface 
being full of small holes. 

At another time, also at Woods Hole, she was witness of an 
interesting fight between a solitary bee and a bee-like parasite. 
She was sitting on a bank under a favorite pine tree facing 

28 



Little Harbor, when suddenly a bee disturbed her by an angry 
buzz. She removed to a distance of a few feet and, watching, 
saw the bee burrow into the bank where she had been seated. 
After a little while the bee came out again, minus some pollen 
masses that had been attached to her body, and then carefully 
closed up the hole. Shortly after a parasitic bee came along, 
searched about the bank for some time, and finally, discovering 
the secret chamber, opened and entered it, or was in the act of 
entering it when she was rudely jerked out by the other bee that 
for some reason had returned, perhaps to deposit more pollen 
along with her egg. 

Once on our climbing jasmine she discovered a solitary wasp 
constructing of mud her small egg case, graceful in shape as a 
Grecian vase. Only the lower tiers were done when she found 
it, and we watched the insect go and come with mud in its jaws, 
using them and its feet very skilfully, patting the clay, until 
the little narrow-necked vase was completed. Then she began 
to store the jar with small green larvae and finally laid an egg 
among them, and sealed on a mud cover. After she had gone 
we removed 27 little green worms, and one white egg, from this 
vase, but could not begin to get them all back, so exquisitely 
had they been tucked away. 

Once [in 1905] she announced that she had seen a small gray 
spider eat its own web. This was on the wistaria vine at one 
corner of our back porch. Being rather skeptical I watched 
with her the next nightfall. The small gray creature spun its 
web at the usual hour and waited for its prey, but, as none came 
immediately, we put a small fly into the web, which it bound 
with its silken cords and devoured. When it had eaten the fly 
the spider appeared to be satisfied and again took down its 
precious web, leaving only a stay-line. It rolled the web into 
little balls with its feet and then did something with these which at 
first was not clear to me. But on using a hand-lens I too saw 

29 



it thrust the web into its mouth and swallow it. This spider 
had a yellowish orange thorax, yellow banded legs, and a gray 
white line down the middle of the abdomen above and below a 
broader velvet black longitudinal stripe bordered by interrupted 
yellow lines all on a gray background. 

One whole summer she had a nest of fungus-cultivating ants 
(Attas) in the house, in a large covered glass dish, so that she 
could watch their habits. This is an ant which grows its own 
food, that is, makes a fungus garden. It occurs in a forest in 
the vicinity of Washington, and is perhaps the most northern 
of the fungus-growing species. It was discovered by Mr. Walter 
T. Swingle, and together we dug the nest out of the earth and 
brought it into the city. It is related to the leaf-cutting 
ants of Central and South America, which also make fungus 
gardens, but this ant grows its fungus not directly on leaves but 
on the dung-pellets of small leaf -eating larvae which it collects 
in the deciduous woods of the District of Columbia. We sub- 
stituted dry oatmeal, the inner peal of oranges, etc., for the soil 
of their garden. The ants were very sensitive to an undue 
amount of moisture. When the garden was destroyed by 
moving it, they carefully rearranged it and threw out all intrud- 
ing particles. 

Several times on warm days in autumn she watched the nup- 
tial flight of ants and saw the queens return, throw off their 
wings, and enter the earth. 

One summer she was very much interested in a wood-boring 
bee which tried in vain to make a nest in a very resinous hard 
piece of pine wood forming one of the supports of our back 
porch. After two or three trials it abandoned the undertaking 
and flew away. Some weeks later it, or another, returned and 
made a hole in a softer piece of wood. She said it was the 
same bee. 

30 



The following entries I have culled from her notebook: 

November 27, 1898. A strong wind blowing from the north. The crows 
are blown out of their course in going home to roost. 

July 23. Found tonight in the eavestrough a small naked sparrow, 
not more than two days old. When I approached the old bird flew away. 
Another small bird appeared to be dead and I did not touch it. Put the 
bird in a box with a woolen cloth; fed it bread and water. 

July 24. The little bird is all right and on looking into the trough this 
morning found that the other bird was still alive. It is smaller than the 
first and not as strong and does not swallow as easily. The mother must 
have fed it and kept it warm during the night. The only signs of feather 

are two dark lines under the skin on the , a patch on top of the head 

and a line down the middle of the back. The eyes are not yet open. 

March 19, 1900. English sparrows, crows, and a small woodpecker 
having a small red spot on the head have been about all winter. Several 
weeks ago I heard the song of the snow birds but saw them the first time 
today. 

March 24. The first flock of blackbirds passed today. 

April 3. Heard the first robin. 

April 23. Saw the nickers for the first time. 

April 29. A pair of song sparrows are in the locust trees, singing almost 
continuously. The first red-headed woodpecker of the season. A cedar 

bird in the oak trees. A woodpecker, probably the female 

busily seeking food. The chimney swallows have come and I saw a buzzard 
today. The latter stays through the whole winter. 

April 30. Two birds in the oak trees which look much alike but have 
different songs. The general color, olive green. 

May 1. Sparrow hawk with a bird in its claws. 

July 6, 7 and 8, 1902. A spider has every night spun a web on the porch. 
It does not come out until dusk and then spins its web very rapidly, taking 
from 20 minutes to a half hour. Web very fine and 18 inches in diameter. 
Web entirely gone in the morning. Does the spider gather it up each night 
and use it again? 

July 9. Storm coming up about dusk, distant lightning almost con- 
tinuous. Spider appeared late, 23 minutes after 8. It usually appears 
from 15 minutes to 8 until 8. It hung about 5 minutes, went back, came 
out again, spun two short lines, went back, came out again, hung for 15 
minutes, went back for good, or at least until 10.30. Storm over then. Did 
it feel the storm coming? 

July IS- A spider spun a web in the same place as the one seen on the 
6, 7, 8 and 9th. It is slightly larger and looks fresh or clean, as if it had 
molted. Two hind legs barred with light and dark gray. 

July 18. Spider behaved tonight just as it did before the storm. Evi- 
dently a fly a night, as I have been feeding it, is more than it requires. 

31 



1 have counted only 10 chimney swifts at a time in the sky this summer. 
This afternoon there are 20 or more. The young are probably out, as 
some seem slightly smaller and I hear occasionally a note higher in key and 
not at all like the usual chatter of these birds. 

September 24. Pound a winged ant on front doorstep. Took it into the 
house and put it into a glass dish with a glass cover. Put in the dish a 
small piece of wet sponge, a piece of apple, hard boiled egg and bread. 
Made the dish dark by covering with black cloth. Did not see ant eat 
anything. As soon as it was put into the dish the ant tore off its wings but 
so quickly that I could not see how it was done. It spent much of the time 
cleaning itself. 

September 25. Found the ant this morning on the sponge which was 
nearly dry. Cleaned the dish and put in larger piece of wet sponge, apple, 
bread, lean piece of bacon, and bit of fudge. The ant stayed near the 
sponge for some time, cleaning itself and then went searching about the 
dish. Later I found it on the apple. The abdomen is slightly extended, 
perhaps with the liquids it has taken. 

2 p. m. Ant on sponge cleaning itself. Later. Ant escaped and could 
not be found. 

December 26, Today Erwin brought home a pair of rabbits, said to be 
English rabbits. We have put them in the laundry. They look exactly 
alike in color but one is larger than the other. 

December 27. One rabbit seems to be boss, for it takes away food from 
the other which does not object. 

December 28. Last night the rabbits started to dig a hole through the 
concrete but made little progress. 

December 29. The larger rabbit is tamer than the other which is very 
shy. They seem to care more for eating than anything else and the larger 
one will let you rub and scratch him if you have something for him to eat 
while you are doing it. They like carrots, celery, cabbage, grass and 
potatoes, which they manage to get out of the basket themselves. Turnips 
they will not touch. 

January 3, 1903. The rabbits are getting particular about their food. 
They will only eat celery tops now. 

May 2. Two weeks ago, found the nest of a large red ant on the hillside. 
This morning there were many small dark ants around it, evidently feeding 
on something about 2 inches from the nest. I was much surprised to see a 
red ant seize a small one, turn under its abdomen as if to sting it, and after 
a little struggle take it into the nest. Several were thus captured and 
taken in. Then I noticed that two ants were stationed at one of the 
entrances to the nest and if a small ant strayed near enough seized it and 
dragged it down the hole. Why did the small ants insist on staying around 
the nest? Are the large ants slave makers? 

One half hour later I looked again. More large ants were to be seen 
and two were carrying small ants into the nest from some little distance. 

32 



May 6. Found ants swarming on Staughton Street near alley. Winged 
ants have been flying around the lamp at night for some days. 

June 8. In Garnatti's A Recipe for Good Cheere, I find this: "The 
dog who smiles with his tail," and it brings to my mind a water spaniel at 
Woods Hole whose master took her and her puppy to swim every day. 
She was never quite happy in the water until she could get her tail out and 
then she swam about waving it above the water. It was not easy to get 
the wet bushy tail to the top but she always managed to do it. 

June q. About two weeks ago I heard for the first time the kingbird's 
song. He was sitting on the telephone wire near the house. The song 
was sweet, not long, and such a surprise to me that I could hardly believe 
that it was a kingbird. 

The yellow throated vireo is building in one of the oak trees again. So 
far I have heard four distinct notes, the two common ones, one a little 
like a tree toad, and a call of two rough grating sounds. The wood pewee 
about the house also has four notes. The usual pe-a-wee of three syllables, 
a call of two syllables with a falling inflexion, a single note, perhaps the 
first part of the usual song, and a chirp like the sound made by striking two 
pebbles together. This last I heard when the sparrows were following him 
and he was scolding at them. 

June 24. A very small black ant, as small as the little red ant found in 
houses, was swarming in front of the Holmes' house this morning. There 
was no loose earth around the entrances which were between the bricks 
in the walk. 

October 2. Lasius latipes and Lasius umbratus swarming at Woods Hole. 

Birds seen at Woods Hole between July 11 and October, 1903: Common 
tern, king fisher, chipping sparrow, robin, cat bird, barn-swallow, purple 
grackle, song sparrow, parula warbler, gold finch, chewink, chickadee, king 
bird, red start, yellow-billed cuckoo, crow, humming bird, chimney swift, 
wild duck, pewee, Maryland yellow throat, brown thrasher, vesper sparrow, 
yellow- throated vireo, red-winged black bird, roseate tern, marsh hawk, green 
heron, Henshaw's sparrow, cliff swallow, semi-palmated sand piper, spotted 
sand piper, least sand piper, turn stone, black-throated green warbler, 
flicker, loon, black-crowned night heron, summer warbler, black-billed 
cuckoo, white breasted nuthatch, prairie warbler, herring gull, bluebird, 
black and white warbler, chestnut sided warbler, red-eyed vireo, Carolina 
wren, Baltimore oriole, downy woodpecker, purple finch, oven bird, cedar 
bird, blue jay, pine warbler, veery, quail, golden crowned kinglet, several 
hawks that I could not identify. 

October 10, 11, and 12, 1904. The migratory birds have been going over, 
and the calls could be heard very distinctly. The nights were somewhat 
cloudy with mists and the birds must have been flying unusually low. 
The days were warm but October 13 a cold spell came. 

May 7, 1905. The Carolina wren and yellow-billed cuckoo were to be heard 
for the first time this year; also the pewee. The house wrens returned 
about two weeks ago and so far I have seen or heard robins, purple grackles, 

33 



flickers, red-headed woodpeckers, least fly-catchers, summer warblers, cat 
birds, blue birds, vireos. Heard the black-poll warbler for the first time 
on May 27. He has been in the neighborhood for nearly a month. 

June 18. For the second time I have seen a sparrow carry rag-weed 
(Ambrosia) into the nest. In pulling down a sparrow's nest on the porch I 
found fresh yarrow worked into it [bitter plants]. 

September — . The Lepisma appears to change its color according to 
exposure to light. I noticed that those found among the leaves of stored 
books were nearly white, those running about the house are a dark gray. 

It would scarcely be credited what eager search I have made 
through her books for traces of her spirit. She seldom indicated 
favorite passages by pencil markings as I am in the habit of 
doing. Here and there, however, I have found precious memen- 
toes. These fragments so well indicate certain phases of her 
thought, and some of them bring her back so vividly, that they 
may properly find a place here. They belong, most of them at 
least, between her 13th and her 18th year, but a few of the sad 
ones later, when she saw clearly that her life could not be a 
very long one. 

Hyp. Is there no way 

Left open to accord this difference. 
But you must make one with your swords? 

Vict. No! none! 

— Longfellow: The Spanish Student. 

The day is ending, 
The night is descending; 
The marsh is frozen, 

The river dead. 
The snow recommences; 
The buried fences 
Mark no longer 

The road o'er the plain. 

— Longfellow: An Afternoon in February. 

And pleasantly under the silver moon, and under the silent, solemn 
stars, ring the steel shoes of the skaters on the frozen sea, and voices and 
the sound of bells. — Longfellow: Drift-Wood. 



34 



The Angels of Wind and of Fire 
Chant only one hymn, and expire 

With the song's irresistible stress; 
Expire in their rapture and wonder, 
As harp-strings are broken asunder 

By music they throb to express. 

— Longfellow: Sandalphon. 



Yes; I would learn of thee thy song, 

With all its flowing numbers, 
And in a voice as fresh and strong 
As thine is, sing it all day long, 

And hear it in my slumbers. 

— Longfellow: Mai River. 



All the many sounds of nature 
Borrowed sweetness from his singing; 
All the hearts of men were softened 
By the pathos of his music. 

— Longfellow: The Song of Hiawatha. 



He the sweetest of all singers, 
Beautiful and childlike was he. 
Brave as man is, soft as woman 
Pliant as a wand of willow. 

— Longfellow: The Song of Hiawatha. 



The hours I count not 
As a sun-dial; but am like a clock. 
That tells the time as well by night as day. 

— Longfellow: Michael Angelo. 



In happy hours, when the imagination 
Wakes like a wind at midnight, and the soul 
Trembles in all its leaves, it is a joy 
To be uplifted on its wings, and listen 
To the prophetic voices in the air 
That call us onward. 

— Longfellow: Michael Angelo. 

35 



A generation 
That, wanting reverence, wanteth the best food 
The soul can feed on. There's not room enough 
For age and youth upon this little planet. 
Age must give way. 

— Longfellow: Michael Angelo. 

For age is opportunity no less 
Than youth itself, though in another dress. 
And as the evening twilight fades away 
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day. 

— Longfellow: Morituri Salutamus. 

A man that all men honor, and the model 
That all should follow; one who works and prays, 
For work is prayer, and consecrates his life 
To the sublime ideal of his art, 
Till art and life are one. 

— Longfellow: Michael Angelo. 

There are great truths that pitch their shining tents 
Outside our walls, and though but dimly seen 
In the gray dawn, they will be manifest 
When the light widens into perfect day. 

— Longfellow: Michael Angelo. 

Thou makest full confession; and a gleam 
As of the dawn on some dark forest cast, 
Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase. 

— Longfellow: La Divina Commedia. 

Think of thy brother no ill, but throw a veil over his failings. 

— Longfellow: The Children of the Lord's Supper. 



Serve yourself, would you be well served. 

— Longfellow: Miles Standish. 

The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight, 
But they, while their companions slept. 
Were toiling upward in the night. 

— Longfellow: The Ladder of St. Augustine. 

36 



Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, 
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; 
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another, 
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence. 

— Longfellow: Tales of a Wayside Inn. 

Take all that it can give or lend 
But know that death is at the end! 

— Longfellow: Haroun Al Raschid, 

Parting with friends is temporary death 
As all death is. We see no more their faces, 
Nor hear their voices, save in memory; 
But messages of love give us assurance 
That we are not forgotten. 

— Longfellow: Michael Angelo. 

Raise then the hymn to Death. Deliverer! 
God hath anointed thee to free the oppressed 
And crush the oppressor. 

— Bryant: Hymn to Death. 

Life mocks tie idle hate 

Of his arch-enemy Death — yea, seats himself 
Upon the tyrant's throne — the sepulchre. 
And of the triumphs of his ghostly foe 
Makes his own nourishment. 

— Bryant: A Forest Hymn. 

They talk of short-lived pleasure — be it so — 

Pain dies as quickly : stern hard-featured Pain 

Expires, and lets her weary prisoner go. 

The fiercest agonies have shortest reign; 

And after dreams of horror comes again 

The welcome morning with its rays of peace. 

Oblivion softly wiping out the stain. 

Makes the strong secret pangs of shame to cease; 

Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase 

Are fruits of innocence and blessedness: 

Thus joy o'erborne and bound, doth still release 

His young limbs from the chains that round him press. 

Weep not that the world changes — did it keep 

A stable changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep. 

— Bryant: Mutation. 

37 



So live, that when thy summons comes to join 
The innumerable caravan, which moves 
To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night, 
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave. 
Like one, who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams. 

— Bryant: Thanatopsis. 

What though the field be lost? 
All is not lost: 

— Milton: Paradise Lost, I. 

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st 
Live well. 

— Milton: Paradise Lost, XI. 

Masters' commands come with a power resistless 
To such as owe them absolute subjection. 

— Milton: Samson Agonistes. 

Compelled to breathe indeed, compelled to strive, 
Compelled to fear, yet not allowed to hope. 

— William Morris: The Earthly Paradise. 

Against the following she had penciled the word "Life." 

What strange confused dreams swept through his sleep! 

What fights he fought, nor knew with whom or why; 

How piteously for nothing he must weep. 

For what inane rewards he still must try 

To pierce the inner earth or scale the sky! 

What faces long forgot rose up to him! 

On what a sea of unrest did he swim! 

— William Morris: The Earthly Paradise. 

And days that ever fall to worse. 
And blind lives struggling with a curse 
They cannot grasp! 

— William Morris: The Earthly Paradise. 

At her funeral, which was held in our home, and which I 
conducted myself, believing that she would have preferred it so, 
since we had scarcely any acquaintances among clergymen or 
sympathy with their creeds, I read, among other things, part of 

38 



Tennyson's Holy Grail, which she thought the noblest and most 
spiritual of all his verse; Edwin Arnold's After Death in Arabia; 
Whittier's The Shadow and the Light; and from the Buddhist 
scriptures the following sayings, which I chose rather than pas- 
sages from the New Testament because they seemed more 
appropriate to her temper and spirit and also because she had 
been familiar with all of them and had lived in their spirit: 

Because he has pity upon every living creature, therefore is a man called 
"holy." 

With pure thoughts and fullness of love, I will do towards others what I 
do for myself. 

The member of Buddha's order * * * should not intentionally 
destroy the life of any being, down even to a worm or an ant. 

Now, said he, I will seek a noble law, unlike the worldly methods known 
to men, * * * and will fight against the mischief wrought upon man 
by sickness, age, and death. 

Watch your thoughts. Control your tongue. 

Be pure and live with the pure. Pure in word and deed and heart. 

May I speak kindly and softly to every one I chance to meet. 

For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time; hatred ceases by love; 
this is an old rule. 

Not from weeping or grieving will any obtain peace of mind. 

The practice of religion involves as a first principle a loving, compas- 
sionate heart for all creatures. 

Not by birth does one become low caste, not by birth a Brahmana; by 
his deeds he becomes low caste, by his deeds he becomes a Brahmana. 

Whosoever * * * harms living beings * * * and in whom 
there is no compassion for them, let us know such as a "base-born." 

At the end of life the soul goes forth alone; whereupon only our good 
deeds befriend us. 

Whatsoever a man has done, whether virtuous or sinful deeds, not one of 
them is of little importance; they all bear some kind of fruit. 

Be kind to all that lives. Not hurting any creature. 

What is goodness? First and foremost the agreement of the will with the 
conscience. 

The Royal Prince, perceiving the tired oxen, * * * the men toiling 
beneath the midday sun, and the birds devouring the hapless insects, his 
heart was filled with grief, as a man would feel upon seeing his own house- 
hold bound in fetters : thus was he touched with sorrow for the whole family 
of sentient creatures. 

Like a * * * flower that is rich in color, but has no scent, so are the 
fine * * * words of him who does not act accordingly. 

39 



If only the thoughts be directed to that which is right, then happiness 
must necessarily follow. 

I love living things that have no feet, * * * four-footed creatures, 
and things with many feet. * * * May all creatures, all things that 
live, all beings of whatever kind, may they all behold good fortune. 

He who lives far from me yet walks righteously, is ever near me. 

The Scripture saith: "Be kind and benevolent to every being, and spread 
peace in the world. * * * If it happen that thou see anything to be 
killed, thy soul shall be moved with pity and compassion. Ah! how watch- 
ful should we be over ourselves!" 

When first I undertook to obtain wisdom, then also I took on me to 
defend (the weak). All living things of whatsoever sort call forth my 
compassion and pity. 

The body may wear the ascetic's garb, the heart may be immersed in 
worldly thoughts; * * * the body may wear a worldly guise, the heart 
mount high to things celestial. 

He who * * * is tender to all that lives * * * is protected by 
heaven and loved by men. 

Day and night the mind of Buddha's disciples always delights in com- 
passion. 

Hell was not created by any one. * * * The fire of the angry mind 
produces the fire of hell, and consumes its possessor. When a person does 
evil, he lights the fire of hell, and burns with his own fire. 

He who does wrong, O King, comes to feel remorse * * * But he 
who does well feels no remorse, and feeling no remorse, gladness will spring 
up within him. 

The present is an imperfect existence: * * * I pray for greater 
perfection in the next. 

The world is afflicted with death and decay; therefore the wise do not 
grieve, knowing the terms of the world. 

I also read the following chapter from Rolleston's Epictetus : 

i. Seek not to have things happen as you choose them, but rather choose 
them to happen as they do, and so shall you live prosperously. 

2. Disease is a hindrance of the body, not of the Will, unless the Will 
itself consent. Lameness is a hindrance of the leg, not of the Will. And 
this you may say on every occasion, for nothing can happen to you but you 
will find it a hindrance not of yourself but of some other thing. 

3. What, then, are the things that oppress us and perturb us? What 
else than opinions? He that goeth away and leaveth his familiars and com- 
panions and wonted places and habits — with what else is he oppressed than 
his opinions? Now, little children, if they cry because their nurse has left 
them for a while, straightway forget their sorrow when they are given a 
small cake. Wilt thou be likened unto a little child? 

40 



— "Nay, by Zeus! for I would not be thus affected by a little cake, but by 
right opinions." 

And what are these? 

They are such as a man should study all day long to observe — that he be 
not subject to the effects of any thing that is alien to him, neither of friend, 
nor place, nor exercises; yea, not even of his own body, but to remember 
the Law, and have it ever before his eyes. And what is the divine Law? 
To hold fast that which is his own, and to claim nothing that is another's; 
to use what is given him, and not to covet what is not given; to yield up 
easily and willingly what is taken away, giving thanks for the time that he 
has had it at his service. This do— or cry for the nurse and mamma; for 
what doth it matter to what or whom thou art subject, from what thy 
welfare hangs? Wherein art thou better than one who bewails himself for 
his mistress, if thou lament thy exercises and porticoes and comrades, and 
all such pastime? Another cometh, grieving because he shall no more 
drink of the water of Dirce. And is the Marcian water worse than that of 
Dirce? 

— "But I was used to the other." 

And to this also thou shalt be used; and when thou art so affected 
towards it, lament for it too, and try to make a verse like that of Euripides — ■ 

"The baths of Nero and the Marcian stream." 

Behold how tragedies are made, when common chances happen to 
foolish men! 

4. — "But when shall I see Athens and the Acropolis again?" 

Wretched man! doth not that satisfy thee which thou seest every day? 
Hast thou aught better or greater to see than the sun, the moon, the stars, 
the common earth, the sea? But if withal thou mark the way of Him that 
governeth the whole, and bear Him about within thee, wilt thou still long 
for cut stones and a fine rock? And when thou shalt come to leave the sun 
itself and the moon, what wilt thou do? Sit down and cry, like the chil- 
dren? What, then, wert thou doing in the school? What didst thou hear, 
what didst thou learn? Why didst thou write thyself down a philosopher, 
when thou mightest have written the truth, as thus: / made certain begin- 
nings, and read Chrysippus, but did not so much as enter the door of a philoso- 
pher? For how shouldst thou have aught in common with Socrates, who 
died as he died, who lived as he lived — or with Diogenes? Dost thou think 
that any of these men lamented or was indignant because he should see 
such a man or such a woman no more? or because he should not dwell in 
Athens or in Corinth, but, as it might chance, in Susa or Ecbatana? When 
a man can leave the banquet or the game when he pleases, shall such a one 
grieve if he remains? Shall he not, as in a game, stay only so long as he is 
entertained? A man of this stamp would endure such a thing as perpetual 
exile or sentence of death. 

Wilt thou not now be weaned as children are, and take more solid food, 
nor cry any more after thy mother and nurse, wailing like an old woman? 

41 



— "But if I quit them I shall grieve them." 

Thou grieve them? Never; but that shall grieve them which grieveth 
thee — Opinion. What hast thou then to do? Cast away thy own bad 
opinion; and they, if they do well, will cast away theirs; if not, they are 
the causes of their own lamenting. 

5. Man, be mad at last, as the saying is, for peace, for freedom, for 
magnanimity. Lift up thy head, as one delivered from slavery. Dare to 
look up to God and say: Deal with me henceforth as thou wilt; I am of one 
mind with thee; I am thine. I reject nothing that seems good to thee; lead me 
whithersoever thou wilt, clothe me in what dress thou wilt. Wilt thou have me 
govern or live privately, or stay at home, or go into exile, or be a poor man, or a 
rich? For all these conditions I will be thy advocate with men — I show the 
nature of each of them, what it is. 

Nay, but sit in a corner and wait for thy mother to feed thee? 

6. Who would Hercules have been if he had sat at home? He would 
have been Eurystheus, and not Hercules. And how many companions and 
friends had he in his journeying about the world? But nothing was dearer 
to him than God; and for this he was believed to be the son of God, yea, 
and was the son of God. And trusting in God, he went about purging away 
lawlessness and wrong. But thou art no Hercules, and canst not purge 
away evils not thine own? nor yet Theseus, who cleared Attica of evil 
things? Then clear away thine own. From thy breast, from thy mind 
cast out, instead of Procrustes and Sciron, grief, fear, covetousness, envy, 
malice, avarice, effeminacy, profligacy. And these things cannot otherwise 
be cast out than by looking to God only, being affected only by him, and 
consecrated to his commands. But choosing anything else than this, thou 
wilt follow with groaning and lamentation whatever is stronger than thou, 
ever seeking prosperity in things outside thyself, and never able to attain 
it. For thou seekest it where it is not, and neglectest to seek it where it is. 

Nevertheless, the year after her death I was as one daft, and, 
either actually or in memory, wandered about all the places we 
had frequented together, trying to bring back more vividly her 
rare and beautiful self, her every gesture, look, and word. It 
was then that I began a series of letters to her, of which the 
following are parts of two: 

Woods Hole, Mass., 
Sunday, August II, IQ07. 

We came uneventfully yesterday, stopping over for four hours only on 
Friday in New York. Agnes had never seen the city so I took her about 
showing her lower Broadway and Fifth Avenue. The Sound was very 
quiet and the morning across Buzzard's Bay fresh and beautiful — life 
seemed almost worth living again as the sweet sea air blew over me. Agnes 
was enjoying every moment of it, all new to her. I was thinking of you, 

42 



my dear, wondering whether your quiet ghost would miss me from the 
accustomed home and grieve, knowing not where to find me, or whether 
your spirit would flit along with me to this other familiar place. 

I know not whether you now lead a conscious life and if so to what extent 
you can follow mine. If you haunt the old home I am sure you will remem- 
ber it is summer time and that we were wont to go away then and so will 
wait for my return. If you are not tied to places and can follow my goings 
and comings, as I like to believe, then you will know where to find me. 

I am in our old room facing the shaded roadway and the Little Harbor. 
It seemed good to come here again, both because everything in the room 
reminds me of you, and the dear old days when we were together here, and 
because it will not seem a strange place to your spirit, if you can come too. 

It is a windless morning. There was a heavy dew, and sun and fog are 
now contending. People are going and coming from church. Agnes has 
just returned from mass. I sit at the west window where we so often sat 
reading together. The peace of God is in my heart and I feel no need of 
any church or any mediator. When I have finished this I am going to take 
my church reading the Idyls of the King. Since you have gone I have 
been intolerably lonely at times and it has been a kind of solace to re-read 
the poets. In this way I have passed many an hour. When I was in the 
hospital I read all of Tennyson's dramas, and since coming out I have 
begun at the beginning of his works to read all in course. In this way I 
have got as far as the last of the Idyls, and have found a number of interest- 
ing things which hitherto, with all my browsings in Tennyson, I had never 
read carefully. I am planning to read other English poets in the same way, 
from cover to cover, and not in the old desultory fashion. For this purpose 
I brought Robert Browning with me — not our old thin-paper edition, but 
the four-volume one (Tauchnitz edition) which you read in Italy. I shall 
think many times as I read it how your fingers lingered lovingly over the 
pages — this summer a year ago, under the shadow of the Alps. Alas, how 
much of fate may be wrapped up in a little year! 

I brought many notes and manuscripts relating to scientific things, for 
I hope to finish, or nearly finish, the second volume of my book while here 
this summer and autumn, but only a few heart books — Plato's Republic, 
and Giovanni Marradi's poems being about all. Later I thought I would 
send for a dainty Italian edition of Dante's La Vita Nuova with illustrations 
from Rossetti. If I finish Tennyson and Browning this summer I shall do 
very well, although I hope also to do the same with Plato and Marradi. 

Yesterday I wandered all about the fields and shore, seeing many pleasant 
places we have enjoyed together in the vanished years. My heart was 
heavy and the tears would fall, as they are doing now. I seemed to be the 
ghost of my old self, seeking in vain for a beloved spirit. Where are you, 
my dear? I cannot think you have perished utterly. You live at least in 
my memory as vividly as ever. 



43 



Woods Hole, Mass., 

{3 p. m.), October 8, 1907. 

This is your birthday. A fierce gale tore down branches and vext the sea 
all night, and still roars, driving the rain and tossing the salt spray wildly. 
It is a bitter day for sailors and we shall no doubt hear of many wrecks. 
Some lines from Tennyson's Ulysses have been running through my head: 
"On shore, and when, thro' scudding drifts, the rainy Hyades vext the dim 
sea: I am become a name," etc. How we loved these old myths! I write 
on a table in the laboratory, all alone, with heart fit to break. Alas, how 
melancholy one can be even in the midst of people! and how miserably 
alone! Ah, well, we must bear bravely as we can what time and the fates 
have assigned us, so fulfilling our doom, or our mission, as one looks at it. 

For days I have looked ahead to this day as peculiarly yours. Now that 
it is here and I am a part of it, let me send greeting to you by whatsoever 
far sea or shore you wander. I cannot think of you as utterly dead: so 
sweet a spirit, so brave and patient a soul, should have a better fate, and, 
please God, may it be yours. Surely, if He is our Father then are we His 
children, and if children, heirs, as St. Paul puts it. I have not much liking 
for St. Paul, but drowning men catch at straws and this thought of his may 
be something much more substantial than drifting rubbish. 

I pray daily for the peace of your soul and think of you, when I am not 
perplexed with doubts, as having entered into some other existence of His, 
where forever you are to grow in a knowledge of this infinite Universe of 
God, and into a light and peace of which we in this dim earth-life can have 
no comprehension. Even if this were true, are you not forever lost to me? 
You will have made such vast advances, and I am such poor material to 
begin with, and then, too, space is so infinite, His worlds so many, and the 
chances of finding you so slight! Unless, indeed, your unseen sweet 
presence should be very near to me all the time, like the Daemon of Socrates. 
This feeling offers most comfort, but I am not always firm set in it, but 
rather tost about, hoping and fearing by turns. I was never very eager 
for life after death till you went away. Now I long for it inexpressibly for 
your dear sake, and also I am full of a desire to be joined unto you in that 
new life whatever it be, dim or bright, good or bad, if the Oversold will 
only grant it. 

You are mine still, by the strength of that love which bound us, and I 
must think of you as not yet so far on in that other spiritual existence, that 
you do not take interest in what interests me, and in the things which for- 
merly would have given you joy. So let me confide in you as of old, divide 
with you all my joys and sorrows, beloved. 

The sunshine has broken through the storm clouds and irradiates the 
room. I will take it for a good omen. It almost gives me joy in my 
loneliness, I am so much a creature of the sun. Indeed, it is no wonder 
to me that the first men worshipped him as a God. How could they do 
otherwise! seeing his glory, feeling his warmth, eating the fruit of his 
harvests! 

44 



It is many days since I have written to you and many things have hap- 
pened which you would have enjoyed. I have wandered over your wood- 
land paths, have sat by the sea in your favorite spots, have listened to the 
birds, watched all the outdoor life, sailed the seas, and tramped the fields 
we knew so well, with you always in mind. A thousand things, often very 
trivial ones, as a cat on a wall, have reminded me of you. I do not like 
cats, but for your sake I stooped down and petted the creature as I have 
seen you do so often with tender comforting words for the blind life in the 
beast, which wrought always such tenderness and wealth of love in your 
considerate heart. St. Francis of Assisi was not more tender to all that 
lives than you, my gentle wife: true disciple of Buddha were you, as much 
as lies in any of us Occidentals to be, and tender hearted toward all the dumb 
creation, and whatever had no voice, or means of self-defense. Why you 
should have been so more than myself or another, I know not, only you 
were, and it is one of the traits that serves to single you out conspicuously 
from all I have ever known. Where I, not cruel, would have passed by with 
indifference, your heart expressed itself in a sympathetic word or gesture, 
showing ever the thoughtful, tender, beautiful soul, unselfish and helpful, 
beyond most! 

"O strong soul, by what shore tarriest thou now?" 

Often since her death I have thought of her in connection 
with Henrietta Renan and have applied to her what Renan says 
of his beloved sister. {Lettres Intimes, pp. 77-78) 

Nous ignorons les rapports des grandes ames avec l'infini ; mais si, comme 
tout porte a le croire, la conscience n'est qu' une communion passagere avec 
l'univers, communion qui nous fait entrer plus au moins avant dans le sein 
de Dieu, n'est-ce pas pour les ames comme celle-ci que rirnmortalite est 
faite? Si 1 'horn me a le pouvoir de sculpter, d'apres un model divin qu'il 
ne choisit pas, une grande personality morale, composee en parties egales 
et de lui et de l'ideal, ce qui vit avec une pleine realite, assurement c'est 
cela. Ce n'est pas la matiere que est, puis-qu'elle n'est pas une; ce n'est 
pas l'atome qui est, puisqu'il est inconscient. C'est l'ame qui est, quand 
elle a vraiment marque sa trace dans l'histoire eternelle du vrai et du bien. 
Qui, mieux que mon amie, accomplie cette haute destinee? Enlevee au 
moment ou elle atteignait la pleine maturitd de sa nature, elle n'eut jamais 
ete plus parfait. Elle etait parvenue au sommet de la vie vertueuse; ses 
vues sur l'univers ne seraient pas allees plus loin; la mesure du devourment 

et de la tendresse pour elle etait comble. 

******* 

Elle est morte presque sans recompense. * * * La recompense, a 
vrai dire, elle n'y pensa jamais. * * * La vertu n'etait pas chez elle 
le fruit d'une theorie, mais le resultat d'un pli absolu de natur. Elle fit 
le bien, pour le bien et non pour son salut. * * * Que son souvenir 
nous reste comme un precieux argument de ces verites eternelles que chaque 
vie vertueuse contribue a demontrer. 

45 



Following these fragmentary notes I have placed parts of 
three of her letters (describing Baracoa and Naples), and an 
appreciation by two of her neighbors who describe better than 
I could hope to do it certain of her salient traits. 

At her request I burned her body, and I have thrown her ashes 
into the sea and scattered them along the shore of her beloved 
Woods Hole (vide Sonnet XXXVI). 

Upon the reverse of the beautiful low relief of her face made 
by Mr. Victor D. Brenner, the sculptor, he engraved the follow- 
ing words from Victor Hugo's drama, Les Bur graves, which may 

fittingly close this introduction : 

* * * Souffrir, 

Rever, puis s'en aller. C'est le sort de la femme. 




46 



BARACOA. 

[April, 1904.] 

Baracoa is the most quaint and foreign place we have yet seen. 
Situated on a small harbor, surrounded by palm-covered 
mountains, the low, red-tiled, brightly colored houses climbing 
up the hill, highest of all the old Spanish fort, with blue stuccoed 
walls and red-tiled roof, and the ocean stretching away to the 
east and thundering on the coral shore — it has a most picturesque 
aspect. 

Last week was Holy Week, and we have had the opportunity 
of seeing processions and ceremonies which make one think of 
the Middle Ages. Our hotel faces the triangular plaza at the 
broad end of which is the Catholic Church, a rude brick building, 
not very old, and poorly furnished and very dirty. The Cubans 
are indifferent to dirt to a degree very offensive to northern 
people. The church has few seats and the people bring their 
own chairs and rugs. The swallows fly in and out of the building 
and dogs wander about it at will. 

Holy Thursday was a quiet day. In the evening the band 
played on the plaza and the people walked about and chatted 
and ate sweets. The band has been prominent during all the 
ceremonies, and to say that it plays out of tune and time is a 
poor description. I never heard such discord in all my life. 
Good Friday there was mass in the early morning and at noon 
a procession. Heading the procession came the band, then 

from one side of the church came bearing images nearly 

life-size of the Virgin Mary, dressed in a black velvet robe 
embroidered with silver stars, and trimmed with gold braid at 
the bottom, borne on a platform carried on the shoulders of four 
men. These men walked with slow, short steps, and as the 
figure of Mary was not very securely fastened, it gave the effect 
of moving along with a sort of dancing step which was very 
ridiculous. A third procession bearing an image of Christ 

47 



started from the other side of the church. This Christ had on 
a red wig with a crown of thorns, carried a cross over one shoulder 
and was clothed in a coarse dark green robe. This [image] was 
carried on a platform preceded by a fat crafty priest. These 
two images met at the narrow end of the plaza where they were 
made to bow to each other and then they went down the middle 
of it into the church, the Christ first. During the parade the 
people mingled freely in the procession, laughing and talking. 
Afterward I saw a middle-aged woman go on her knees across 
the whole length of the gravel-covered plaza, carrying in her 
hand a bunch of purple artificial flowers. I think she must have 
been a widow for five small children walked beside her. Late 
in the afternoon a life-size image of Christ in a glass coffin with 
big lanterns at each corner followed by the Virgin was carried 
all around the town and as the procession reached the back part 
of the church the priest burned red fire, and as the images were 
carried down the plaza into the church the red fire was burned 
at intervals. Good Friday is one of the great feast days, and 
Saturday was comparatively quiet. Early Sunday morning I 
was awakened by the band and noise of the people. I stuck 
my head out of the window and saw that there was another 
procession. I dressed in a hurry but found it had passed. 
After going all around the town it returned. First in the pro- 
cession was a life-size standing figure of the resurrected Christ, 
naked with the exception of a piece of cream satin, embroidered 
at one end, tied around the waist. The platform on which he 
was carried was decorated with paper flowers and at each corner 
was a doll-like angel about three feet high. Two small altar 
boys with ragged vestments, one carrying a cross, followed; 
next a dozen small girls walking two and two, then at each side 
of the street a line of larger girls bearing lighted tapers, then two 
small boys carrying lighted lanterns. The priest bearing the 

4 8 



host [came] next, under a red canopy carried by six young girls, 
and last the band. As this went through the plaza to the church 
the priest saw a man with a camera trying to take his picture. 
He stopped the whole procession, made the crowd move back, 
and saw that everyone was perfectly posed, and after the picture 
was taken all moved on again. This ended the parade. The 
people hurried away to the ball of the white people which began 
at 9 o'clock and lasted until noon. There was a funeral immedi- 
ately after the procession. The coffin was carried only to the 
entrance of the church. The priest took his cigar out of his 
mouth, repeated a short service, put his cigar into his mouth and 
walked away to the ball. He took so much liquor that he 
wanted to make speeches continually, and did make four or 
five. The religious ceremony seemed serious and solemn to the 
old alone. The young people have a good time and laugh and 
talk and gossip. 

Early in the morning a figure of Judas was thrown into the 
sea and in the afternoon they punished him as badly (this was 
not a part of the [church] ceremony) . On the open place before 
the sea he was tied upright on a ladder and was burned to the 
joy of the people, especially when the big firecrackers inside of 
him exploded one after another carrying away legs and arms. 

After dark there were fireworks on the plaza and the band 
played and the people paraded. The black population had a 
ball in their clubhouse and the mulattoes in theirs. 

A large greased pole with a ham at the top was set up in this 
place also and two coconut-tree climbers tried to get to the top. 
They did not succeed but we heard that the ham was divided 
between them to pay for the amusement they furnished the 
crowd. 

I expect you will be shocked at this account but we are getting 
used to shocking things. If you imagine the smaller children 
of Staughton street (five or six years and under) going about the 

49 



yards and streets stark naked, you will have a good idea of what 
we see here every day. We often see ten or twelve in a walk 
about town, sometimes entirely naked, and again clothed with 
shoes, or a pair of ear rings or a bracelet of beads. 

The place is extremely isolated. There is no railroad, nor 
are there good roads, only mule-trails back into the country, 
and boats stop at infrequent intervals. If one has good luck 
he can get a letter to Washington in twelve days. The popu- 
lation is 4,000, and there is one coach and one cart in town for 
riding. I don't know any better place to get into a new world 
than here, if one is after sensations. We shall probably remain 
here for several weeks as there is much disease among the palms, 
and everything goes on in the slow Spanish way, manana 
(tomorrow) being always better than today for going anywhere 
or doing anything. 




50 




FLAG OF OUR LAND. 

By Erwin F. Smith. 

From The Evening Star, Wash ington, D. C, June 7, 1M7. 



Flag of our land, flag that it stirs us to see ! 
Crimson her bars in the sun's white light, 
And silver her stars on the blue of night ; 
Glory, Old Glory, symbol of freedom and might, 
Our past, today, and the mighty realm to be. 
Whither thou leadest we go, flag of the free ! 

Banner beloved, flag of our land! 

Sunlight and starlight twain are her friends, 

The God of all righteousness energy lends 

To the ranks of the free when they make their stand, 

And the years take counsel with her for their ends ; 

Whither thou leadest we follow, flag of command ! 

Let Caesars beware of this flag of the free! 

Now 'tis raised, twill be found in the van of the fight 

For end of all kings and the coming of right ; 

Let her folds be flung to the air and the light 

For the rescue of men and the freedom to be. 

Glory, Old Glory, draw us to thee ! 



Cr'iAMM j. \jy^Z^c 



*\ 



NAPLES. 

[March 16, igo6\ 

A city of contrasts : electric cars, automobiles, donkeys, small 
horses, oxen; oxen and horses hitched together, horses and 
donkeys; goats and cows driven through the streets to houses 
desiring milk, the goats seeming to know the way and the man 
with them only necessary to keep them from loitering; people 
clean and dressed in the prevailing fashion, and people dirty, 
dressed in rags and more picturesque; houses less brilliant in 
color than in Cuba; men pounding maize in the street at night 
in great metal vases; everywhere dirt and smells; Vesuvius 
always beautiful and especially so toward sunset, offering free a 
most beautiful picture. English daisies are in blossom, mari- 
golds and oleanders. Some of the trees are just budding. 
Perhaps the last of April or first of May would correspond to 
this in Washington. The fruit-stands are gay with lemons and 
oranges and today we saw from the hotel window a ragged 
beggar girl of about twelve years buy a glass of some red drink 
and then bend down and tell her little sister she could drink so 
much, indicating with her finger, and then by turns the glass was 
emptied. We were too far away to see if the division was equal 
but by the care taken we judged it was. This morning we saw 
some of the coral shops and I was interested to learn that only 
one kind of coral comes from this vicinity (Sicily), most of it 
and the best being sent from Japan and worked into commercial 
shape in Naples. The grass grows on many of the tiled roofs 
and parts of the Central Station roofs are quite green. All this 
afternoon a bat has been flying around, very early it would be 
for American bats, and now there are two instead of one. The 
English sparrow appears to be missing. The iron posts carrying 
trolley wires and electric wires are very artistic. There is much 
improvement to be made in American cities along that line. 
Street pianos are here. Was this their original home? 

51 



[April 25, igo6.} 
Naples is beautifully situated and round about it there are 
many fine views. The city itself with its narrow streets, many 
stairs and curious people, is very interesting. All domestic 
occupations are done out of doors. Women dress and nurse the 
children, look over their heads as monkeys do, comb each others 
hair, wash, dress, cook, sew, all outside of their doors, utterly 
indifferent to the passers by. It is this that makes it appeal so 
much to the artist. 

We were very fortunate to be in Naples when the eruption of 
Vesuvius began, and saw almost the beginning of it from one of 
the hills near the city. The mountain had been quite normal 
during the first part of our stay. On the north side of it there 
were two streams of lava plainly visible at night as two great 
streaks, changing position each night, and along with this only 
a little steam-cloud from the crater. That afternoon the 
mountain began to send up every once in a while great puffs of 
very black smoke and before we came home the smoke hung 
over the bay in a long streamer that looked as if it were slowly 
sifting down ashes as one sometimes sees distant rain dropping 
from a summer cloud. That night there was a slight fall of 
sand-like ashes in the city, which continued until nearly noon 
next day. We went out to see the palace in the morning, 
carrying umbrellas and with veils over our faces. Thursday 
night the wind again brought ashes to Naples, and the mountain 
looked so threatening that we decided to go to Sorrento, which 
is 7 miles farther from the volcano than Naples, and from here 
we had an uninterrupted view of the great eruption, the wind 
always blowing away from us and carrying the ashes the other 
way. For eight days the city of Naples was hidden in this ash 
cloud and during that time received an ash fall from 1 to 4 inches, 
deepest on the side toward the mountain. From Sorrento we 
saw the volcano sending up a great swirling column of ashes to 

52 



a height of nearly five miles which then spread out like a great 
tree-top, extending upward four or five miles more and covering 
miles in area. At night we saw the red-hot lava run down the 
sides of the mountain, the volcanic lightning playing in the ash- 
cloud, and red-hot stones weighing tons thrown high into the 
air and then rolling down the steep dark slopes. Day and night 
there was a distant rumbling sound. It was a wonderful sight, 
awful in its destructive power. After the worst of this eruption 
was over we drove to Boscotrecasa which had been almost 
destroyed by lava. My idea of a lava flow had been that it 
was a smooth stream of melted rock, flowing very slowly, but in- 
stead of this it was like great chunks of coke, tumbling one over 
the other, and crushing everything in its way. The stream we 
saw was about 300 feet wide (the Doctor says 500 feet) and 12 
feet high. We climbed up on the hot mass but did not stay 
long on account of the heat and for fear of burning our shoes. 
Too much praise cannot be given the Italian soldiers who stood 
guard in the intense heat along the lava streams while they were 
still moving. They got the people out of their houses, turned 
the current aside where they could by blasting, and kept order. 
We saw so many soldiers in Naples that we wondered what could 
be their use, little thinking how soon we should see their bravery. 
Here we saw processions of women and children with hair 
hanging down their backs, crowns of thorns on their heads, 
carrying a cross with a cloth on it (the meaning of which I do 
not know), walking to the lava flow and singing. I suppose this 
must have been in fulfillment of a vow made before the lava 
flow ceased. We were told that during the worst day the images 
were taken out of the churches and carried to the lava with 
prayers. Saint Januarius many years ago is said to have miracu- 
lously stopped an eruption, and in one of the squares in Naples is 
his statue with hand raised toward the mountain. To this saint 



53 



the people of Naples appealed but this time he was not pleased 
with them, and the eruption continued. After seeing the lava 
we drove around to the northeast side of the mountain where 
the villages were destroyed. At first the fields had a slight 
coating of dust, then a few cinders, which finally became so 
deep that we could drive no farther. The vineyards, that a week 
before had been beautifully green, were now a desert. Men 
were shovelling so that it would be possible to carry aid to the 
sufferers. Every once in a while a cart carrying a few of the 
household goods of some family would pass, the poor little 
donkey having in some way managed to pull through the ashes. 
Army wagons, drawn by four strong horses, with picks, shovels 
and litters for the dead and wounded, and bags for the household 
belongings slowly made their way past us. I did not go any 
farther, but beyond were villages without a roof on a house; 
men, women and children on heaps of ashes with a little sacking 
for cover; and everywhere cinders and stones from 2 to 6 feet 
deep. The people in their fright — 




54 



3fn Mt moriam. 

It is difficult to find words for the things that stir us most 
deeply, and in the thought of the life that has gone on before 
us, I feel most' inclined to say: 

"Silence here, for love is silent; 
Gazing at the lessening sail." 

I shall not incline to speak to you of a dear neighbor or my 
loved friend, but, as the one who introduced her to membership 
in this Club, I would like to say a few words as to her rare 
qualifications for such membership. 

She was always a student, always eager to learn, with the 
utmost reverence for the truth, and her study was always a 
means to some desired end. German, to which she devoted 
much time, was the gateway to the enjoyment of the rich 
treasures of its literature; Italian, she put to a similar use, but 
found also a great pleasure in learning something of the lives of 
Italian residents, peddlers, fruit-dealers, etc., through her ability 
to speak to them in their own tongue. She was rarely conver- 
sant with English literature, having the strength of mind to do 
what we often speak of as desirable and so seldom do — spend 
more time with the classics of our literature, when it involves 
leaving unread the story of the moment. She was always fully 
conversant with current scientific literature, and there was no 
one to whom it was more natural to turn for the latest word on 
those topics. 

But this student habit of mind was not the quality that sug- 
gested to me first or most strongly the mutual pleasure that 
would come from her membership in this Club. Her powers 
and patience of observation were phenomenal, and her interest 
in living things always eager and unflagging. She was interested 
in plants, especially those of peculiar or marked characteristics, 
but I think she cared little for their classification and seldom 

55 



used a botanical name, but a peculiarity of growth or a marked 
individuality always attracted her. Experiments in the crossing 
of species, little experiments in the conditions of environment, 
even if it only consisted in moving a plant to the other side of 
the yard, roused her sympathetic interest. The last time she 
was in my house, I remember so well her stopping on the steps 
to look at a vine that was protecting itself from threatened 
injury by friction by a thick cork-like growth; that was just 
the sort of thing that she always saw. 

Her love for all forms of animal life was even more enthusiastic. 
Her own household pets, and she had some curious ones, always 
had for her a very distinct personality, and nothing ever roused 
her anger so quickly and thoroughly as any form of cruelty to a 
living creature. 

Birds were a constant delight to her, and it seemed to me that 
she never missed the flutter of a wing or the faintest note. 
Some things, some of us learn to see, but with her it never 
appeared to have to be learned, and the vague indefinite sound 
of migratory birds at night would waken her, as a child's cry 
wakens a mother. 

Birds were only a part of the intensely interesting life that 
surrounded her, the spiders that spun their webs on her porch, 
the wasps and bees that made their homes, or sought their food 
within her sight, the ants that worked or fought or traveled 
near her path were objects of deep interest, and most painstaking 
patient study. 

I have never known a nature in which were so remarkably 
joined the poise and judgment of maturity, and the eager enthu- 
siastic outreach of a child. There was never a trace of pedantry 
in Mrs. Smith, and she shrank from public speech, but when 
she had something that she wished to tell, she told it with utter 
unconsciousness of herself, and an absorption in her subject 

that was beautiful. 

56 



Her study for her next paper for the Club commenced last 
winter, and had been a source of much interest and no little 
amusement to her — it was a view of popular science of two 
hundred years ago, worked out largely from Dr. Johnson's 
Dictionary. She had made a long list of curious definitions but 
when the trip abroad became assured she said: "I shall hope to 
have something of more live interest for the Club when I come 
back." 

She was in Naples last spring, at the time of the eruption of 
Vesuvius, and her descriptions of the event were most charac- 
teristic, her interest in the phenomena almost precluding any 
thought of personal discomfort or danger. 

All too soon, it seems to us, this charming unusual life came 

to its earthly close, but it is very easy to think of its continuance 

beyond our sight, for the childlike spirit is of the Kingdom of 

God. 

Gertrude Taylor. 

Eistophos Club, 

January n, 1907. 



Copy of notes from which a few words were spoken in re- 
membrance of Mrs. Erwin F. Smith, at a meeting of the 

Eistophos Science Club, shortly after her death. 

E. C. W. 

From the time Mrs. Smith came upon our street a girl-bride, nearly 
fifteen years ago, I felt that she was a beautiful woman, and was drawn to 
her as an older woman often is to one so fresh and attractive standing upon 
the threshold of a new life: as I saw her frequently, and learned to know 
her, this beauty impressed itself upon me more and more. Its visible 
expression was of the classical type — the low brow about which grew so 
prettily an abundance of soft, brown hair; her regular features and clear 

57 



complexion were suited to the tall, slender figure of easy carriage. Her 
dress was simple but harmonious, browns relieved by touches of soft pink 
were specially becoming to her. We all recall her sweet expression, and 
the serenity with which she moved. Her mind, too, as has been said, was 
of the Greek type — she loved music, art and languages; her favorite writers 
were the old Greek poets and philosophers. 

I have a post card sent from Rome last spring, my last direct communica- 
tion from her, in which she says, "A week is too short in which to see this 
Imperial City." She enjoyed most thoroughly and intelligently the oppor- 
tunities for wide culture and travel that came in the latter part of her too 
short life. 

I feel that our friend who has just gone from our sight, had a beautiful 
soul; she loved all things true and good, lived her life conscientiously, and 
with a thought for others. She faced death bravely, and fell asleep 
peacefully and I am glad that upon her flower-laden casket, gleamed the 
words of the Christ — "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." 




58 



ODES AND SONGS. 



Thou art gone, O gracious wife, who 
didst carry off the palm in bloom of beauty 
and in bearing of soul; Prote wert thou 
truly called, for all else came second to 
those inimitable graces of thine. 

— Crinagoras, 

(Mackail's Greek Anthology.) 



FORTITUDE. 

Fortitude! thy name should be engraved 

On pillars of stone set at the gateways of the world, 

That all who see may read and ponder ! 

The swinish herd of men know not thy name 

Nor worship at thy lofty shrines, 

But the godlike souls who have embraced thee 

Shine splendid as the stars in heaven! 

Thou hast another name, great attribute! 

The fairest known to men, the sweetest on the tongue, 

Symbol mysterious of earth and heaven : 

The new heaven and the new earth, 

Resplendent, seen by John in vision! 

A name compelling noble deeds, 

Fragrant with all the blossom-dust of time, 

And wreathed about with sacred immortelles. 

Fortitude, thy fairer name is woman ! 



Johns Hopkins Hospital, 

May, 1907. 

61 



THE BELLS OF SANTO SPIRITO.* 

I. 

Dreamers by Arno stream in the perfect May time, 

The world of Florence filled our souls ! 
For thee, O Bella Bellissima, how long our hearts have yearned ! 

Thy realm of beauty is now our own — can its charms be told? 
Old palaces, bridges, gardens, and towers; 

Old pictures and monuments, churches and fountains; 
The cradle of villa-crowned hills, the delectable mountains; 

A vision of cypress and olive, of roses and fleur-de-lys; 
Galileo's tower; Michael Angelo's house with the Lapithae; 

The dim old Baptistery Dante extols, 
Nel mio bel San Giovanni his cadence rollsf ; 

Taddeo Gaddi's arch; Brunelleschi's dome, 
Akin to the mightier one of Angelo in Rome; 

The Bargello grim, to Art's dear uses turned, 
But echoing still for us, as in days of old, 

To din of arms, to roar of flames, and many a hopeless cry; 
Via Tornabuoni; the Market of flowers; 

The splendid Viale winding o'er the hills; 
The surly green swirling flood, the soft blue sky; 

The gay crowds on Lungarno, the somber Cascine; 
The Madonnas in cardinal, azure and gold: 

In a dream of wonder these together were ours, 
Blent with the blossoming, carolling rapture of May. 

As in those of old when the Master was near, our hearts 
responsive burned, 
While ever were ringing the clangorous bells of Santo Spirito — 
O joyous bells, pealing bells! 

•Celebrating the six-hundredth anniversary of the patron saint, Nicola 
di Tolomene, May, 1906. 

flnferno, XIX, 17. In Dante's time San Giovanni was open to the sky 
and full of sunshine. 

62 



II. 

It is May time again, blossom-fragrant, exuberant May ! 

I am far from the gray old city of flowers, 
But my fancies are gray as the gray of her towers. 

The May time returns, but my love delays, 
I shall see no more her beautiful face, 

The smile divine revealing her inner grace, 
But in spirit I walk with her the accustomed ways, 

And most of all the paths of the last sad year, 
Willing with her evermore to abide, 

On the sunny hills, inclining to Arno strand. 
So whenever I hear a resonant, deep-toned bell 

Clang and peal from a church-tower near, 
The somber hour from my fancy strays, 

And the floodgates of memory are opened wide: 
I wander with her the enchanted Tuscan land, 

The land of all lands to the heart most dear, 
Beholding girt by our magic mirror's rim, 

The laughter and tears, the hopes and fears, the wistful faces dim, 
The sad sweet songs of the vanished throngs of the Mediaeval days . 

The sonorous bell holds my spirit in thrall, 
Its undulant tones the glimmering visions recall, 

The centuries rise and fall, the multitudes come and go, 
In a tapestry woven of dreams the pageants ebb and flow. 

Mingled with these runs a sorrowful thread of my own, 
Of two that were one, and of one who now is alone, 

And again I hear the bells of Santo Spirito — 
Mournful bells, tolling bells ! 
63 



III. 

I walk with my soul through lonely ways; 

I keep sad trysts with her spirit dear: 
In streets which echoed once fierce cries of Guelf and Ghibelin; 

In fortressed palaces where now the souls of painters dwell 
Triumphant over time; at San Lorenzo, 

Santa Croce, somber Santa Trinita, 
Piazza della Signoria, Palazzo Vecchio; 

By the Brownings' Casa Guidi, 
In Santa Maria Novella 

Where faintly smiles the fair Albizzi, 
By Giotto's mottled tower and the graves of San Miniato! 

All these delights untold we share, with eyes suffused or clear, 
And what more without sin of heart's treasure the heart can win, 

For our faces shine with the glow of Ideal Beauty's high altar 
And our lips they have named her sacred name, L name » 

Where perfect the works of her thrice anointed* ones appear: 
For lofty thought wed to perfect form must ever man's spirit 

O joy, to see what master-souls have wrought: [.compel. 

Donatello's strength, Desiderio's grace, 

Della Robbia's singing boys, Monna Vanna's happy face,f 
Botticelli's girl with yellow hair, 

He painted only one, such grace had his lady fair, 



*For imagination, purity and creative power. 

t"She fills the room with sunshine, and all day long she seems to whisper 
some beloved name." — Edward Hutton. 

64 



The David of Angelo, the Madonnas of Raphael, 

The saints and angels of Fra Angelico ! 
The splendor undimmed of a glorious past 

Shines on us, beloved, wherever we go, 
Entranced, in the Florentine treasure-house vast, 
Beholding her priceless things — the beauty immortal no 
tongue can tell — 
While through our souls surge ever the bells of Santo Spiritc 
Sad sweet bells, sorrowful bells ! 



6s 



IV. 



With her again I haunt the quaint old shops, 

And hear the mellifluous tongue, transfigured in poesy old ; 
Haunt the dim aisles of the peaceful Santo Spirito; 

Breathe pilgrim vows at Landor's grave; 
Tread Santa Croce's time-worn floors, 

Beholding the vacant tomb where atonement is made to the 
Whom civic throes into lonely exile drove— t s P irit brave > 

The sunbright one, in golden verse forever and ever alive ! 
Be praise for his lofty soul unto most high God, the giver! 

Behold again San Marco's missal treasure- trove, 
Lorenzo's tomb, Ghiberti's heavenly doors,* 

Or take once more that last long drive, 
When at sunset in the dark Cascine, 

We heard, O wonder, the nightingale's gurgling notes! 
With silence the Eternal Beauty filled our souls, 

While the level sun burnished the river 
And mottled dark forest and road with all Gentile's gold. 

The sun has set, and the mists on the river are gray, 
But still the melodious bird its sweet throat pours 

To its nest and its mate in the forest cold, [rolls 

The while our hearts keep time as borne on the wind the melody 

And the river in middle night types the lif e of the city to me : 



*" Michael Angelo Buonarroti standing to look at these doors, and being 
asked what he thought of them, and whether they were beautiful, replied 
in these words: 'They are so beautiful, that they might fittingly stand 
at the gates of Paradise.'" — Vasari. (Mrs. Foster's Translation.) 

66 



When I hear in sleepless hours the mournful lap-lap of the 
hungry flood, 
I think of the cruel centuries of fire and blood 
As whelmed in the turbid tide to leave a people united and free ! 
The shadowy past with its scorn and sin has been swept away, 
As our own souls sweep to the measureless sea, 

Yielding place to the new-born day. 
O deep-voiced bells of Santo Spirito, sound on, sound ever — 
Solemn bells, tender bells, reverberant bells ! 



67 



Nature and Art, twin goddesses fair, 

Walked with her, my beloved, everywhere, 
Unfolding the beauty in common and lowly things, 

Till the varied earth, inwoven with mystic light, 
Darkened and gleamed, a haunting loveliness of form and tone, 

Proclaiming in rapturous hours the Master Will, 
The indwelling Soul, whose law unto love is wed. 

Oh would I could know if the heart's sweet music ends with 
the broken strings, 
Or sings to a lordlier harp beyond our mortal sight! 

With the clogs of the mortal body forever shed, 
Somewhere I trust, in the cosmic vastness, she liveth still, 

Wiser and statelier grown, more beautiful there, 
But finding still in the good of others her own! 

For stript and broken the heart to its hope still clings, 
As a man to a spar for his life in a turbulent stream. 

So whenever I dream a certain dream, 
Where lost hopes blossom again in a golden clime, 

Her sweet face blends with faces long dead, 
Of poets and painters, sages and saints: 

O masterful sad sweet faces, illuming the pages of Time, 



68 



I know she belongs to your company fan- 
By grace of a spirit cast in a noble mold, 

And often I long for your fellowship there, 
In the lonely hours when the spirit faints, 

If so I might touch her garment's fold, 
As in dreams I hear the bells of Santo Spirito, 

And brood on the peaceful days that were ours of old. 
O memory-flooding bells, thronging bells, 
Farewell, farewell! 



Johns Hopkins Hospital, May, 1907. 

Revised, October, 1909. 
69 



CIENFUEGOS. 

(March, 1904.) 
I. 

Cienfuegos, land of the hundred fires! 

Land of the Royal palm ! 
Land of the mountains in purple shadow veiled! 

Hail to thee, hail ! In vain the spirit aspires 
To a calm sweet and deep as the calm 

That broods in thy valleys and rests on thy hills, 
As ocean the ocean bed fills! 

But the peaceful now, distilling its balm, 
Roots deep in a gloomy past 

Whose umbra cold was o'er man's spirit cast. 
O land of the palm and the pine! 

What sinuous coils the serpent hath trailed 
On thy peaceful shores, in days that are gone! 

And what dreams of the past thy name recalls : 
Dreams of the troubled New World's dawn, 

Of the fierce strong men of old, 
Flushed with adventure, as men with wine, 

Broadswording their way till carnage palls, 
Over this land for love of gold. 



70 



II. 

Rejoicing the heart with its fine surprise, 

Thy beautiful broad blue water lies, 
A mirror for dappled clouds, whose banners unfurled 

Are lovely to see 
Under thine azure and amethyst skies. 

Blue, blue! thou liest, jewel fair, without a stain, 
Beside the lonely Carib sea, 

With room, O noble lake, for the ships of the world, 
And no hint of escape to the main, 

Till one comes to that narrow way whose silver span 
Divides the land from the land 

To give to the ocean its own. 
On thy breast what beautiful shadows are thrown, 

O lovely water! The snowy pelican 
Sweeps gracefully over thy shining strand, 

And my spirit soars and sings 
To the beautiful curves of her broad white wings, 

That wheel and flash and gleam, 
More shining than pinions of seraph in dream! 



71 



III. 

And that sixteenth century band, 

So resolute and eager to scheme and plan, 
What dreams of Empire were theirs! 

They looked, as we look, on a summer land, 
But wilder then, with only the brown-skinned man 

To roam her woods and fields, 
To climb her cloud-capped mountain stairs. 

With uplifted appealing hands, 
The past to the present yields : 

In the blistering sun, the cane fields he 
Where once the Indian's wigwam stood, 

And no shore echoes more to his piercing cry — 
Gone from this strand are his bands, 

And gone are his gods, and gone is his wood! 
Where the lonely forest stood, the city now stands, 

And white sails come and go, or at anchor ride, 
Where his lone canoe did o'er these waters glide. 

Masters on sea and shore were these in the olden day, 
But now a dream and no more are they. 



72 



IV. 

The conquerors too have passed to the land of dreams, 

With their lust for gold and their love of power — 
Lost, lost, like trailing meteor gleams; 

And their far-off children's children, a puny race, 
Low of stature and brown of face, 

Now dwell at their ease in the sunhot land, 
And the stranger who tarries an hour, 

Wonders how seemed this life to the men of old, 
When they pushed their prows to the strand 

Of this multiple-strange new land, 
In quest of adventures bold, of lands and of gold, 

Of women and slaves to have and to hold, 
By the lordly king's command, 

The king of Spain and the Spanish main, 
Whose name over all this broad demesne, 

Was graven ruddy and deep by their desire 
In letters of blood and fire! 

Can we judge their hearts as we judge our own, 
Or were they a law to themselves alone? 



73 



Those towering Spaniards of old, 
Those men of blood and fire, 

Of lust for conquest and gold, 
They had their desire, 

And now are dust; 
As we have ours, 

For a moment's space, 
Ere we go to our mother's breast, 

Twined with the roots of the flowers, 
Out of the light and into our rest! 

In the years unborn, not theirs nor ours to command: 
Strong men and weak, just men and unjust, 

Past and Present, together shall rust 
When the Future holds the dominant hand! 

For the world of men sweeps on apace, 
And nothing that lives holds long its place! 

At last, or good or bad, all comes to dust, 
And a king's command, no more than a beggar's face, 

Stirs the heart of the new born race. 



Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, Md., August n, 1910. 
(A perfect day.) 

74 



ON THE BLUE SEA: 

(A song of remembrance.) 

On the sea, the sea, 
If my love were with me, 
To the Fortunate Isles 

Would we trim our sails, 
For the Future smiles, 
Where the sunset trails, 
Far over the sea! 

On the sea, the sea, 
From the Past set free, 

Siren voices are in our ears; 
The echoes of other years 
Sound far away 
To-day, to-day, 
On the shining sea! 

On the sea, the sea, 
The measureless, free, 
Blown ever by friendly gales I 
No room for fears, 
No place for tears, 
Where joy ne'er fails, 
On the shimmering sea! 



75 



On the sea, the sea, 
Wind-blown and care-free, 
Since Love ever smiles 
And music beguiles, 
What should we care 
How long the way there, 
On the billowy sea! 

On the sea, the sea, 

Lovers are we 
And the wind is fair, 
Then what should we care 
How long the way there, 

Far over the sea? 

The summer blue sea! 



On train, Woods Hole to Boston, 

September 20, 19 10. 
76 



A SUMMER SONG 

(Of one who has not found his love.) 

Ripple of wind on the golden wheat, 
Murmur of bees in the summer air, 
Music of birds in the meadows fair, 
Ripple of waters lapping my feet — 
These are the gifts I give, 
Come, O come! 

Fleeces of feathery clouds in the blue, 

Wind of the morning blown from the west, 
Shadows of clouds that are never at rest, 
Fair as a dream is the earth for you. 
Everything waits, my Love, 
Then come, O come! 

Glory of sun and of shadow thrown, 
Wonder of hills and of waters fair, 
Mingled with joy of the pure sweet air, 
Make of my youth a glory your own. 
For you, the tender and true, 
All things are glad! 



77 



Golden, the hours run on. Will she come? 
Yea, and my song is the song of the lark. 
Over the waters I watch for her bark 
Dreaming, and my heart for joy is dumb. 
O light, and life, and song, 
Can her way be long? 

Pining and grief to the winds shall be blown — 
Blown by the winds of the morning away, 
Far, far, to an unremembered day, 
When she comes, my own, my own ! 
Till then I sing glad songs, 
And my heaven is blue! 



September 12, 1911, 
At 1474 Belmont Street. 

(The notes were made in the autumn of 19 10 on a glorious 
Sunday morning, walking the streets of New York.) 

78 



A CHILD'S SONG. 

(To Dorothy) 

I sing because I am so happy, 

It bubbles out of me ! 
The wind is in the trees at play, 

The brook it sings to me ! 
Then come away, away, to-day! 

I sing because I am so happy, 
Yet know not whence my glee ! 

The crickets chirp a roundelay, 
The birds they sing for me ! 

Then play away, away, to-day! 

I sing because I am so happy, 
God made the day care-free, 

And all the golden hours for play ! 
Then shout and sing with me, 

And dance away, away, to-day! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, February 9, 19 13. 
79 



FIRST DAY OUT. 

Holla, holla, 

My heart is singing to-day! 
For gray is the sea to the starboard, 
And blue is the sea to the larboard, 

And gentle the winds that have sway 
As we sail away! 
Holla, holla, 

Still, still, is the mighty sea — 
The bosom of many a fleecy cloud, 
But the heart of the man it crieth aloud, 

For here it is good to be ! 

Wind swept and free! 
Holla, holla, 

Keen, keen is the heart's delight, 
For straight as an arrow, the path we take, 
And whiter than snow our foam -flecked wake, 

As we sail to meet the night, 

On the sea, sun-bright! 
Holla, holla, 

The heart of the world is mine! 
To find it I go far over the sea 
And the mighty deep rejoices with me, 

Alive, pulsating, divine 

To the horizon line! 



S. S. Lapland, 
July 26, 1913. 



80 



NIGHTFALL. 

As many stars as the heaven shows, 
So many lights has the Protean sea! 

Far over the deep the twilight grows, 
And the glimmering ocean whispers to me- 
Sad, infinite things! 

As many moods as the human soul, 
So many ways has the shifting sea! 

For hither and yon its waters roll 

Under the night, as my thought in me 
Recurrent swings. 

As many graves as our hearts enfold, 
So many dead has the hungry sea! 

By the swashing waves her dead are knolled, 

While ever my heart for the dead in me 

A requiem sings. 



S. S. Lapland, 

July 27, 1913. 

81 



FAIR WEATHER. 

All day, in undulant, idle play, 
The mighty ocean ambled away, 

With never a fleck of foam on its breast, 
And never a moment of perfect rest. 
O joy of the heaving sea, 
The joy of a god to me ! 

Encircling the dark blue sea as a crown 
The dome of the pale blue sky dipped down. 
On our lordly ship the sun gleamed bright, 
And fleecy clouds were the heart's delight. 
O joy of the glittering sea, 
The joy of a god to me! 

All day we sailed the broad blue main, 
No ship in sight on the endless plain, 

But light of heart, as the white gulls there 
Flashing in sunlight their plumage fair. 
O joy of the lonely sea, 
The joy of a god to me! 

Since only to be on the wave is a joy, 
Where heart of the man becomes heart of a boy, 
Enough, I ween, for serenity's sake 
Are the rainbows flashed in the spray of our wake. 
O joy of the sunlit sea, 
The joy of a god to me! 

S. S. Lapland, 

July 28, 1913. 

82 



MIDNIGHT. 

Dark is the sea 'neath a heaven of stars, 

Wonderful, glimmering, luminous stars. 

Far on the horizon's darkening rim, 

Ghostly and black in the vagueness of night, 
Drift on the restless tide — cloud-shadows dim, 
Ghosts in my phantasy, fleeing the light. 
Far to the west and its bed in the sea, 
Wonderful, glimmering, darkening sea, 
Trailing its stars in a luminous chain, 

Diamond-glittering Scorpio glows; 
Glorious diadem hung o'er the main 

Low in the north, solemn, the Great Bear shows. 
Diamond lights on its foamy breast, 
Gleaming and vanishing lights on its breast, 
Noisily rushes the surge in our wake. 

Endlessly shifting and drifting it goes — 
Far to the rear like a glittering snake, 
Undulant, jewelled and crested, it glows. 
Lonely a meteor flames through the sky, 
Wonderful, jewelled and infinite sky, 
Trailing its luminous path like a star, 

Burning its way to the night and the sea! 
Bells of the midnight my revery mar — 
Severed are ocean and ego in me! 

S. S. Lapland, 

July 29, 1913. 

83 



INNISFREE. 

(To William B. Yeats.) 

Master, in some lone hour, could I but make 

One poem like thine "Innisfree," 

On that one perfect thing I'd stake 

Fame's immortality, and win : 

It hath such longing melody 

Of glamouring woodland, mere, and lea — 

Avon's "one touch," that " makes the whole world kin !" 



J. H. H., 

January 20, 19 14. 



84 



A LOVE SONG. 

Io Hymen, Hymenaee. 
— Catullus. 

On the red man's prairie, miles from anywhere, 
The silvery, silky globes of the pasque* unfold 

In the warm spring air. 

By men unseen the miracle goes on 

Till their bridal robes — laced-silver, and purple, and gold — 

The anemones don. 

Only the wandering bees and the butterflies know, 
The meadows, dearer to them than the wings they have on, 

Where the pasque flowers grow. 

For in secret the honied blooms have sworn a pact, 
Since the far-off time of mammoth and mastodon, 

Together with them to act. 

And the years of the pact into ages unnumbered have grown 
And ever the time draws on, when the vernal gleam 

Is over the prairies thrown. 

Then under the tent of blue, with its white cloud-roof, 
Neither the man nor the wolf disturbs their dream, 

But only the bison's hoof. 



J. H. H. 

February 4, 19 14. 



*NuttalPs anemone. 

85 



SONNETS. 



* * * Io mi son un che quando 
Amore spira, noto; ed a quel modo 
Ch'ei detta dentro, vo significando. 

— Dante: Purgatorio, XXIV, 52-54. 



I. 
MUSIC AT HOME. 

When now I hear the harmonies she played, 
Although her gracious image haunts my brain, 

The sense of loneliness will not be stayed, 
And all the chords are blent with subtle pain. 

The dulcet tones recall the old sweet days: 
Her dainty fingers sweep the ivory keys; 

With endless floods of melody she sways 

My raptured soul. The mighty Masters please 

Her most, and with her spirit best accord. 

Wagner and Grieg* and I^iszt with her agree, 
But most of all she loves Beethoven, lord 

Of all sweet harmony : the Master he 
Under whose all-embracing watch and ward, 

Our souls sail out on an uncharted sea. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, Washington, D. C. 
December 12, 1909. 



*The Peer Gynt suite and Lohengrin were special favorites. 

89 



II. 
THE LOVE OF ART. 

When Michael Angelo his David carved, 
He took from choice a stone rejected thrice 

By lesser men; when aged Rembrandt starved, 
He painted canvases beyond all price: 

Which proves the common man not master-wise. 

Indeed, how should he hear the higher voice, 
Whose throat is overfull of specious lies? 

But those who walk in Art's high way, from choice, 

They breathe a purer air than ever blows 
O'er common ways; and comradeship if rare 

Is rich beyond compare, and fairer grows 

With lapse of years. Up rugged steeps and bare 

The pathway leads, but he who climbeth knows 
The prospect grows at every turn more fair! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

December 12, 1909. 
90 



III. 
SUMMER SEAS. 

(Woods Hole, Mass.) 

O perfect day! I lie beneath the pines, 
And watch the white sails dot the wide blue sea, 
Alone I lie, remembering days with thee 

By sea and shore — days quaffed like rarest wines, 

Whose perfume lingers long, O vanished wife: 
Dear golden days, which now return no more 
To him who roams her wood-paths o'er and o'er — 

Recalls on kelp-strewn shore her pure sweet life. 

In countless tender ways I name her worth: 
She sleeps not unremembered nor alone, 

The soughing pines her requiem shall sing, 
The salt seas grieve for her in monotone, 

And all the winds that blow shall message bring 
To her whose bones are dust in Mother Earth. 



On train Boston to Washington, 

January i and 3, 19 10. 
91 



IV. 
EVENINGS WITH BOOKS. 

"The world of books is still the world" said she 

Who knew all books so well, both grave and gay.* 
To us our books revealed the sacred play 
Of men and women's souls, laid bare to free 

The prisoned god, with power to move his world! 
What long still hours we read old tales and new, 
With now and then sweet interchange of view! 

From our small nook what vistas were unfurled, 

What old-time men and maidens trod the boards, 
How rang out Milton's, Homer's, Heine's lines, 

How clasped we Shakespeare's, Shelley's hands, crossed swords 
With D'Artagnan, shared Virgil's corn and wines, 

To dear Charles Lamb and Dickens showed our hoards, 
Or delved with Keats in Fancy's Indian mines! 



January 5, 1910. 

The library at 1460 (now 1474) Belmont Street (where we 
read together). 



*Mrs. Browning. 

92 



V. 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Thou livest still in all our heart's best blood, 

Dear Robert Louis, prince of all who tell 
Strange tales of Fortune's power by field and flood. 

On Apia 's palmy strand, in Scottish dell, 
Or wheresoe 'er thy wandering footsteps fell, 

The gods did grant thee Gaelic second-sight, 
And wondrous power thy clairvoyance to tell. 

Thy Treasure Island is our treasure bright ; 

Thine Arabian Nights are tales as weird, as brave 
Scheherazade told, from night to night, 

In Arab days of old, her life to save; 
Thy songs and prayers are ours to be upright; 

And that lone hill in tropic seas, thy grave, 
Shall be a holy mount, a beacon light! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

January 17, 1910. 

93 



VI. 
CONFUCIUS. 

(B. C. 600.) 

Sincere great Master Kong, of alien race, 
And ancient time, as our brief record runs, 
But modern in the light of flashing suns, 

And modern too in ethic fire and grace, 

Long years passed by ere I did know thy worth, 
But now I hold thee dear as Jew or Greek. 
Thy perfect Doctrine of the Mean I seek, 

Thine Analects I delve as golden earth. 

Clear-eyed, serene of soul, in counsel sage, 

Thy wisdom and thy worth are not alone 
Cathay's domain but all men's heritage : 

Therefore, that simple Chefu tomb of thine, 

Beneath the cedar's gloom, shall be a throne 
Of righteousness for aye, and great world-shrine ! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

January 21 and 24, 19 10. 
94 



VII. 
DEAD LOVES. 

'Helas, je sais un chant d' amour, triste ou gai, 
Tour a tour": Its sorrows touch all hearts, 
And, young or old, remembrance ne'er departs; 

Its music floods the world with songs of May; 

Its bliss reveals the god within our clay ! 
O tender love, O bittersweet! Time parts 
The dearest hearts, and loves are won with smarts 

As loves are lost, and all things fade away 

To memories, sad or sweet, recalled by song! 
Musset, Chopin, Beethoven, Angelo, 

Sad names are these ! Of Heloise the fair, 
Of Edith, Rosamond or meek Valliere; 
Of Lammermoor's or Amy Robsart's woe; 
O time! What now remains but tender song? 



At 1460 Belmont Street (evening), 

January 28, 1910. 
95 



VIII. 
MIGRATORY BIRDS. 

(Probably vireos or warblers.) 

With joyous eagerness, in midmost night, 

"Listen, my dear," she said, and I intent, 
Constraining feebler sense, as best I might, 

At last, heard faint and far, and downward sent 
From upper air, the voice of birds, in flight 

To nesting lands far north, spring's sweet content 
Within each tiny breast. If heard aright, 

Your piping notes unto each other meant: 

'Yes, comrades, here we are, and all is well, 

Beneath the quiet stars. " O wandering birds! 

What knowledge guides you through the pathless air? 
What simple faith inspires your unknown words? 
What utter trust is yours in Nature's care! 
Oh, shamed are we in lesser faith to dwell! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday evening January 30, 1910. 
96 



IX. 

HER GRAVE AND MINE: SEPTEMBER. 

(Woods Hole, Mass.) 

Days shorter grow and winds now freer blow, 
The crickets chirp within the golden grass, 
On unknown quests the brown ants zigzag pass, 

Rains seldom fall, and trees begin to show 

The red and gold of autumn's vesture gay; 

Within the bush the field mouse squeaks her zest, 
Or frightened seeks to gain her grass-lined nest 

At scream or shadow thrown from bird of prey. 

Oh, two-fold mystery of life and death : 
Delight in cries expressed, fear holding breath ! 
The mouse spares not the beetle's tender brood, 

And keenest hunger wings the hawk's fierce quest ! 
Each one fulfills the measure of God's mood, 
And only such as we have perfect rest! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, March 6, 19 10. 
97 



X. 

AN AUTUMN STORM. 

(Woods Hole, Mass.) 

O winged storm! The sea to-day is grand! 

Poseidon's white-maned horses plough the shore ! 
Among the rocks, close-wrapped and capped, we stand, 

To watch the foam-clad crooked furrows pour 
From ocean's heart and wallow toward the land. 

O'er kelp-clad slippery rocks the waters roar : 
Resurging, grinding, at the god's command. 

And pounding and resounding evermore, 
The thwarted sea in spite upon us throws 

Its bitter spray, but cannot quench our glee. 
We joy in every mood the sea god knows, 

In every wind that blows: of Hellas we, 
And when the spell is on, her beauty glows 

Within our souls and brightens stormiest sea! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

March 10, 19 10. 
98 



XI. 
BARACOA: 1904. 

A palm-clad land whose shores abruptly rise 
In range on range of rugged sea-scarred hills ! 
Hemmed in by ocean-shore and mountain rills, 

Scant is the space where Baracoa lies 

Beside her quaint round port, in crater guise. 
On either hand, outstretched to distant hills, 
A wealth of palmy green the landscape fills, 

And earth with sea and sky in beauty vies 

To cast a spell on those who know this strand. 
O'er all — a cynosure for ships that pass — 

Afar, flat-topped El Yunque jagged towers, 
An ocean floor upthrust on slag of glass :* 
Lone sentinel, and witness mute to powers 
That linger still within this smiling land. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

April 15, 1910. 



"Obsidian. 

99 



XII. 

BARACOA (II). 

The ravined sharks in all her waters swim ; 

In storms the ocean thunders at her doors ; 

The trade- winds blow her spice from distant shores; 
The tropic rains to sudden torrents brim 
Her mountain streams; the tireless vultures skim 

Her forest tops and wheel o'er curving shores; 

From cloudless blue the sudden rainflood pours — 
Then all again is clear to ocean's rim. 

O witching, beauteous, balmy, summer land ! 
O glorious, incurving, sunrise strand! 
Thy mother dear has been the ocean wave, 
And she shall be on some far day thy grave, 

When tidal wave shall sweep from shore to shore* 
And all again be slimy ocean floor. 



On train between New York and Washington, 
April 25, 1910. 



*The high benches back of the city mark the caverned shore of an 

ancient sea. 

100 



XIII. 

BARACOA (III). 

In Baracoa's past her present dwells: 

Here Time in sloth hath stayed the shaping hand! 

Four hundred years of Spain have kept this land 
As when Columbus saw his caravels 
Aground upon her bar — and great oaths swore ! 

The world moves on, but Baracoa sleeps 

In sun and squalor on her coral deeps, 
Content to eat and drink, and sleep once more! 

Upon her rocks, alone, in April days, 

How oft our souls by memories were wrung, 
Desiring lands beyond her lonely sea — 
Good food, clean beds, home speech and modern ways ! 
A lonely land, indeed, for such as we, 
Who know but ill her velvet Spanish tongue! 



On train New York to Washington, 
April 25, 1910. 



XIV. 

BARACOA (IV). 

A tender sky is hers : earth never gave 

More precious gifts than those she holds in fee ! 

Here summer dwells beside her azure sea, 
And largess pours of all the senses crave, 
While cool the trade-winds blow o'er tropic wave. 

Yet this is not the land for you and me. 

Of all her sons scarce one is nobly free: 
A few grow rich, the many starve and slave, 

And one corrupted church holds ignorant sway, 
Compelling all to bend to her the knee 
In servile fear, from cradle unto grave,* 
Lest wrath of God should burn in judgment day. 
In leading-strings they fare : they are not free, 
Nor know they there what means that great word — brave ! 



Park Avenue Hotel, New York, 

April 2i, 1910. 



*And after, if the grave rent is not paid! 



XV. 
REMEMBRANCE. 

Great soul, when I thy martyrdom recall, 
Those endless nights and days of torturing pain, 
Thy slowly waning strength, thy beauty slain, 

Thy stubborn fight with Death from spring to fall 

And on, till winter days made end of all, 
A new Gethsemane invades my brain ! 
It all returns : again my Love is slain, 

And unassuaged grief holds me in tin-all ! 

But when I think of all thy fortitude, 
Thy stoic patience kept, thy gentleness, 

And most of all thy tender love expressed 
For others in thy mortal hour, not less 
Thy trust in God, my soul to gratitude 
Is moved for nobleness so manifest ! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

May 29 and 30, 1910. 
103 



XVI. 

HER GRAVE AND MINE: MORNING 
AND EVENING. 

(Woods Hole, Mass.) 

The traveler here may pause with kindling eye, 
Sweeping, at break of day, the prospect wide, 
With scarce a thought of those that here abide 
The summer's heat, the winter's cold — for nigh 
Is far, to one whose sunrise hope leaps high, 
' Inspiring him to ride both far and wide; 
And here may lovers come at even-tide, 
To watch the sunset glow on sea and sky, 
Or twilight fade and night reveal her stars : 
A night of soft gray mists and mysteries, 
Most fit for deep and pure heart histories; 

Or one that sometimes follows summer storms, 
When all the sky is luminous with stars, 
And God's infinitude the soul informs ! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

June 2, 1910. 

104 



XVII. 
THE OLD FAITH AND THE NEW 

Of the body of Christ in the bread, Tertullian said : 

Credo quia impossible est. 

Herein the Latin Father well expressed 
The Middle Age : an age in texts well-read, 
In knowledge weak, and unto Credos wed. 

The Church hath not as yet the truth confessed, 

But, in the end, she must disown the test, 
For all blind faith in thoughtful minds is dead, 
Or will be by and by, with knowledge grown. 

We would believe because we cannot doubt, 
Would make the unknown tally with the known ! 

But if to Faith you still would cling, nor flout, 
To read the text in this new way were best : 
Credo quia non impossibile est ! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Midnight, June 15, 19 10. 
105 



XVIII. 

BEETHOVEN (I). 

Devout from youth, thy spirit yearned for light ! 
Sceptic and infidel they branded thee, 
Because thou wouldst serve God and still be free 

From trammels holy men forge day and night 

To bind their fellow men. For thee the right 
Lay not in musty creeds, which can agree 
No jot with souls by righteousness made free, 

Yet no man more with God walked day and night! 

In later years, when sound no more was heard, 
Thy saddened, lofty soul dwelt much alone! 
Beyond the reach of kindly human word, 

Thy brooding spirit soared through realms of light, 
And made its own the mightier organ tone 
Of suns and systems rolled in endless flight. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

June 24, 1910. 

106 



XIX. 

BEYOND. 

Brooding and sad o'er loss of loveliness, 
Since she hath gone, I walk too much alone ; 

Yet all her soul expressed of gentleness 
So clingeth unto me it seems my own. 

I know not where her spirit pure resides, 

Nor what strange tasks are hers, but this I know, 

That where she is, there deep sweet peace abides, 
And neighbored so she cannot lonely grow. 

And where she dwells there let her husband fare; 

Although it were at need to deeps of hell, 
'Twere greater joy by her companioned there, 

Than, lone, in heavenly ranges fair, to dwell : 

So much by loss hath I,ove exceeding grown, 
So much, her voice unheard, the days are lone! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday p. m., June 26, 1910. 

107 



XX. 

THOMAS CARLYLE. 

O stormy prophet of God, Thomas Carlyle! 

Much less from him who is, this tribute falls, 
Than from the eager youth that was erstwhile, 

To whom thy sounding words were clarion calls 

And voices from the higher gods sent down! 

The world has need of work, thy gospel was — 
Not he who dreams shall wear the laurel crown, 

Nor he that cries, "Lord, Lord!" but he that doesl 

O'er all man's devious and selfish ways, 

Thy righteous wrath burned fierce, consuming clods. 
Yet like I best thine earlier hopeful days — 

The Sartor days, when heroes were as gods : 

In age thy genius burned with smoky flame 

And, more and more, fierce praise gave place to blame! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 3, 1910. 



108 



XXI. 
JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 

brilliant woman, proud and sad, whom Fate 
Decreed should Irving's tender love repel 

To be a great man's household drudge and mate! 

To hear eternal grumblings ebb and swell, 
For such an one as thee, scant recompense 

Would seem for all the lavished love of years ! 
Alas, that men should have no finer sense! 

Too late gruff Thomas owned thy worth with tears. 

1 know not sadder fate than such self-scorn 
And pitiful remorse as made him slave, 

And moved him, mightily, when old and lorn, 
To kneel and kiss the grasses on thy grave : 
Alas, when one is gone, it is too late 
To make amends, or loose the bonds of Fate! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 3, and 4, 1910. 



Note: Alex. Carlyle says Thomas Carlyle and Edward Irving were never 
rivals, and that Carlyle 's fondness for Lady Ashburton was not just ground 
for jealousy. Whatever may have been the relations between Irving and 
Miss Welsh when he took Carlyle to meet her, or Carlyle's subsequent 
relations with Lady Ashburton, Jane Welsh by her own admission was once 
passionately in love with Irving, and as Mrs. Carlyle she was made very 
unhappy by the husband who preferred another woman's society to her 
own. Indeed the latter half of her married life appears to have been one 
long torture and torment. 

109 



XXII. 

THE TWO MULTITUDES. 

(To W. S. T.) 

Two multitudes by turns invade my mind : 

The one that swarms through myriad years unborn, 
The other stretched to man's dim natal morn. 

Since both by Fate are strown, as leaves by wind, 

I know not which most to felicitate : 
The multitude passed on and out of strife, 
Or into higher strife, or that whose life 

Shall find on earth a nobler human state, 

When man hath looked deep into Nature's heart, 
From dwarfing selfishness hath purged his own, 
And upright, free, and happy, shall be thrown 

A god among the gods to play his part. 

A million years are in the backward glance, 
Ten million more perchance, for man's advance! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 4, 1910. 



XXIII. 

MATA HARBOR. 

(To J. B. R.) 

The sea lies near, and cool the night wind blows, 
An open deck our bed, we shift in vain, 
Some place to find less swept by wind and rain ! 

How strange it is ! The forest overflows 

With mystery! No sense but what outgoes 

Toward unknown life! 'Tis chill, but why complain 
When one may have, wind-blown, so weird a strain 

Of forest scents and sounds ! At last light grows : 

No stir on shore, no sound; no neighboring ships; 
The water laps, the lonely forest drips; 

And desolate her palm-thatched huts and stores 

In this gray light, as when the fever erst 
Swept all the Spanish traders from her shores, 
And Mata* then was named the place accurst. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

June and July 7, 1910. 



'Probably from the verb "raatar," to kill. 

11 1 



XXIV. 

APRIL DAYS. 

O tender green that's born of April suns ! 

O myriad tiny hands out-thrust to light ! 
Life's current now full-coursed within you runs, 

Till root and shoot forget the winter's night. 

And myriad million cells to one blind end, 

In harmony attuned, within each tree, 
Expand and bud : absorb, consume and blend 

The gifts of earth and air by sun set free. 

And life which seemed so dead those winter days, 
In bud and bloom, by spring's sweet ferment stirred, 

Now wells and overflows the woodland ways, 
And nesting songs in every tree are heard. 

O life within the wood and life in me, 
The selfsame yearning God must in us be! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 8, 1910. 



XXV. 

THE GRAVEYARD AT MATA. 

(April, 1904.) 

Mata, loneliest port the sailor knows, 
When first I stood within thy burial ground, 

That rough hill-side where one lone cashew grows, 
And saw each tomb and slab and cross and mound 

So utterly neglect — so overgrown 

With spiny weeds and vext with sharp-edged halms, 

1 thought: What dreadful spot to call God's own! 
And turned to glimpse the sea through dying palms. 

But when I saw thy hut-born squalid race, 
The brood of ignorance whom sloth has wed, 

For such, I said: 'Tis good enough grave-place; 
And loathing then welled up as pity fled. 

O palm-sick land, what curse hath fallen on thee, 
That so should dwarf the man and blight the tree? 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 10 and 11, 1910. 
113 



XXVI. 

ON READING PIERRE LOTI'S 
PECHEUR D'ISLANDE. 

To me no picture could more vivid be! 

A granite land, wind-swept and desolate,* 
Is this bold strand, where grinds the Channel sea. 

In winter here her menfolk love and mate, 
In summer sail to fish rough Iceland's lee 

Leaving their women lone, to watch and wait 
Return of ships which oft can never be 

Because o'erwhelming seas have been their fate. 

O story filled with mournful sound of sea, 
And wail of fisher-folk for dear ones lost, 
Across thy poignant pages, black with fate, 
A wild and lovely nature wanders free, 

And sharp salt spray is blown, by winds elate, 
O'er all its leaves, so sun- and shadow-crossed! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 19 and 20, 1910. 



*The coast of Brittany. 

114 



XXVII. 

BARACOA (V). 

The blue petraea blows, the flame-tree glows, 
The bright-eyed lizards flash along the walls, 

Its waxwhite tube the giant cactus shows, 
And hot on land and sea the sunshine falls ! 

From spiny shrubs that line the sandy bay, 
To pick red seeds, black-tipped, for necklace wear, 

Through sun and sand, my dear, a weary way, 
To Cyriaco's hut we slowly fare. 

Here neath the palms, at mouth of river Miel, 
We rest an hour or twain as welcome guests : 

Mud-floored the hut — but those within are leal, 
Men, women, children all, to friendship's tests. 

That child-filled Cuban home, where is it now? 
And where, O tender Love, where now art thou? 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, July 24, 1910. 
115 



XXVIII. 

INSOMNIA. 

For me in this deep night hath sleep no part, 
The cells which govern dreamless rest appear 
Or moribund or functionless and sere, 

O'erwrought, perchance, by grief's incessant smart. 

The hours run on ! Unbidden memories start 
In shifting throng. I dwell on dead ones dear, 
Or those that live but are no longer near, 

And wild and bitter longings fill the heart. 

The moon has set, the stars fade one by one; 
His noisy round the milkman has begun; 

The clock strikes four impertinent quick strokes; 
And then within my tall and reverend oaks, 
Beside his mate and nest, from men withdrawn, 
I hear a sweet bird sing the golden dawn.* 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 25, 1910. 



*The wood-thrush, which nested again in the trees in 191 5. 

116 



XXIX. 

THE EARLY LIGHT. 

By naught that's innocent can sleep be won ! 
The night is endless long, the quiet small, 
For one who turns and turns, a weary thrall 

To wakefulness : then welcome be the sun ! 

The growing faint gray light proclaims night done. 
Our ivied sparrows know it first of all : 
One timid note of hope, with answering call 

Of doubt, I hear, then pipings are begun. 

Bird memory brief, they think: "The night is long, 
The daylight gone will never come again, 

Our hunger grows, as grows our fear of night, 
And now once more appears the long-lost light. " 
Wherefore their tiny throats are full of song — 
A prayer more real it seems than prayers of men. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 26, 1910. 

117 



XXX. 

PURITY. 

White soul, that fellowshiped with me a day, 

My grosser spirit knelt before thy shrine 

For aye, and yet reveres the spirit fine 
And high, that templed in too fragile clay! 
Like crystal waters clear, thy soul's deep lay, 

Reflecting day-dreams bright, and pale star-shine! 

Yet tenderness divine was ever thine ! 
Beholding men, thy spirit said alway: 

The sweet Lord Buddh, the gentle Nazarene, 
And all the loftiest souls this earth has seen, 

The pure white stone have sought, as man, his brother; 
But neither Christ, nor Buddha, nor another, 
Can ever, quite, the beast in man dissever 
From the God that yearns and climbs forever! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

July 30, 1910. 

118 



XXXI. 

THE DARK SHADOW. 

Our Plato dear, who wrote with golden pen, 
Bade us fear not with shadowy Death to cope, 
Since needs must be, he said, beyond Death's slope, 

A heaven of men ! Indeed, beyond our ken 

In space, may dwell a race of Godlike men, 
Earthborn but come to morn of vaster scope ! 
Our Goethe dying voiced the strong man's hope : 

Von Aenderungen zu hoheren Aenderungen\ 

Idlest of dreamers, these! I hear one say: 
Yet dreams have moved the world to higher things 

Far more than unaspiring stolid clay ! 

We are such stuff as dreams are made on — sings 

Our great Shakespeare, and all good poets pray 
For faith in God: that song may rise on wings! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

August 4, 1 9 10. 
119 



XXXII. 

STRANGE PETS. 

A sweet-faced girl of Beauty's fragile strain, 

Old for her years, and dowered with noble grace 
And inborn loveliness, a girl whose face 

Once seen, remains for days to haunt the brain, 

In play with two white mice her love made plain 
For all dumb things ! While daintily a space 
Within her garment's fold the mice sought place, 

Some loathed, some stared, and none did know my gain. 

Dear Love, thine own sweet youth through hers to me 

Passed greeting debonair. Anon with care 
I thought how sad her own mid-life might be; 

And then with joy : The same dear spirit dwells 
In more than one sweet girl, and ever wells, 
A heaven of grace, to make this world more fair! 



On train, Washington to New York, 
August 1 6, 19 10. 

Suggested by something seen in a Washington street car. 



XXXIII. 

SUMMER FOLK. 

Once more I roam this old New England shore: 
The sea-gulls scream, the blue waves dance and gleam, 
The brown-green islands feel the hot sun's beam, 

And stately ships go by, like those of yore. 

The sea and shore — the murmur, wash and roar, 

Change not, nor are swept away in Time's swift stream, 
But the men and maids who walked this way in a dream 

Ten summers gone — for how many the dream is o'er! 

In a mighty flood of memories, bitter-sweet, 
Those summers long ago come back to me — 

The laughter, hope and love of years now fled, 
Blent with the mournful note of the restless sea : 
And again for me the dear ones gone and dead, 
Retrace the long and winding wind-swept street! 



Woods Hole, Mass., 

August 28, 1 9 10. 



XXXIV. 

WOODS HOLE. 

The wonder and mystery of the sea speak here, 
To open eye and ear, their message clear; 
And the soul of man throws off all doubt and fear, 
Where vast thy unfathomed starry skies appear; 

But nothing now seems as it did to me, 
When first full-grown, I breathed deep and free, 
This ocean air; and hailed with boyish glee, 
The many-islanded and wide blue sea, 

The winding shore, the fields and woodlands fair; 
And felt on Up and cheek and brow and hair. 
And on the body pressed, as greeting rare. 
The bitter kiss of wind-blown salt sea air : 

For one I loved was with me here of yore 
But now alone I pace the sounding shore. 



Woods Hole, Mass., September 2, 1910. 

Shore of Big Harbor — on Penzance. 



XXXV. 

GRACE AND BEAUTY. 

A rare elusive beauty was her dower, 
With touch of tender melancholy shown 
In gracious word and gesture all her own — 

A grace compelling one to feel its power. 

Her beauty was the image of her soul ! 

In vain the sculptor strives to limn her face, 
In bronze he cannot prison the subtle grace, 

Swift changed, as clouds unfold or waters roll. 

In vain I strive for jeweled words to make 
Her beauty live again. No words can paint 
The perfect image of my aureoled saint — 

That all in her pure soul delight should take : 

Best then to say: Each fleeting thought to grace 
And loveliness was wrought in her sweet face ! 



Woods Hole, Mass., Sunday, September 4, 1910, 

A. M. in the hot sun on the high bluff of Crow Hill over- 
looking Buzzards Bay. 

123 



XXXVI. 
THE NOBSKA SHORE. 

Seul avec I'ocean, seul avec la nature, 
Seul avec vous, Seigneur! 

— Hugo: La I,6gende des Sificles. 

Upon her Mother's breast here let her sleep, 
O 'er-blown by salt sea winds, o'er-washed by spray ! 
On the sounding shore, among the boulders gray, 

Her bed is made; lone, where the white sails sweep 

A broad deep sea, and stars their vigils keep ! 
The sea she loved makes music here alway, 
Repeating loud or low, and night and day, 

Its world-old song of change, and then of sleep ! 

The earth was hers, she loved all joyous things, 
Yet tenderly would touch where sorrow clings; 
St. Francis like, she found some form of good, 
In all the denizens of field and wood : 

Now evermore, on Mother Earth's rough breast, 
A part of sea and shore, she lies at rest. 



Nobska Shore facing Woods Hole, 

Sunday, September n, 1910. 
124 



XXXVII. 

THE HIDDEN TRUTH. 

In hopeful youth one settles doubt offhand ! 

'Tis easy then to show how this is sage 

And that absurd, and battle royal wage 
With all forthwith who fail to understand 
Our point of view and logic's strict demand: 

Quite otherwise it is in doubtful age 

When search hath shown in many a trusted page 
Gross error linked with truth, as hand joins hand: 

Then suddenly some dreary morn we know 
Full sure that time is short, and we shall go 
To silence and the dark before we find 
That hidden Truth of which things seen are rind 
Or outer garment's fold ; and sorrow then 
Sometime hath place among the sons of men. 



Boston Common, 

September 27, 28, 1910. 

125 



XXXVIII. 

SLAUGHTER OF JEWS IN RUSSIA 

O God of Justice and of Vengeance high, 
How long, how long, shall blood of guiltless slain, 
Beneath thine heaven cry to Thee in vain! 

Awake, and smite the wicked hip and thigh, 

'Till cursed priest and Romanoff shall sigh 
To Judah's God to smite no more for pain ! 
Lord God of Sabaoth, the bloody stain 

Makes to Thee night and day its mournful cry! 

In vain the cry! For Israel's God is dead, 
Or works his will alone through daring men ! 
Not till the awful power of Church and State 
In bloody ruin falls, and knowledge spread, 
Shall Russian man be master of his fate, 
And woman safe from tyrant's sword and den! 



Streets of New York, 

Evening of October i, 1910. 



126 



XXXIX. 

THE EARTH MOTHER. 

(To Victor D. Brenner, on seeing for a second time his 
"Return to Nature.") 

A miracle of love in marble wrought 

Reveals the sculptor's soul : Earth Mother young, 
And fair as Dawn, from the rude earth hath sprung, 

To give to man new strength and joyous thought; 

To bring her peace to him who lies distraught, 
And weary unto death of discords flung 
Him from the knees of higher Gods, unsung — 

Unsolvable in terms of human thought. 

Here all the tenderness of woman's soul, 
Clothed in the perfect form so rarely seen, 
Outflows to comfort him of noble mien 
By sorrow overthrown ! It is his goal ! 

Man finds alone in woman's spirit rest, 

Till great Earth Mother folds him to her breast! 



New York, 

October i, 2, 3, 1910. 



127 



XL. 

EDWIN BOOTH'S ROOM AT THE 
PLAYERS' CLUB. 

It is the Master's room ! His great soul here, 
In darkness drear, did brave Death's bitter rage 
Kingly to move upon some vaster stage 

In this great Universe. Thank God ! No fear 

That souls like his should sleep the eternal year ! 
It must be that they move from age to age 
Among the sons of God in heritage 

Of dramas vaster planned than dreamed of here! 

Since Booth made Hamlet's sorrow seem bis own, 
Not yet so many shadowy years have flown 
That they should dim the luster of his fame. 
Himself hath gone, but love enshrines his name, 
And makes this room, unchanged since it was his, 
The symbol of eternal verities! 



New York, 

October 9, io, 1910. 



128 



XLI. 
SPRING AT ELMWOOD. 

At Elmwood now the lilac hedges bloom, 

As for the poet's joy they bloomed of old; 

His velvet lawns their dainty shoots unfold, 
The crows from his elm-tops call. The spring has room 
For all sweet things — the hyacinth's purple gloom, 

The bluebird's call, the tulip's heart of gold. 

All things are glad as when the brave song rolled 
From the Master's lips, yea, spring would deck his tomb ! 

For man he spoke brave words, he did brave deeds, 

His words roll through the soul like organ peals, 
Awak'ning tenderness for human needs : 
Therefore he lives in every heart that feels, 
And each new spring the lilac's fragrance shed 
Shall float in benediction o'er his head! 



New York, 
Sunday evening, October 9, 19 10, except first line which was 
at Cambridge three weeks ago passing by the hedges. 
The old house where Lowell was born stands far back 
from the street surrounded by the lilacs. 
129 



XUI. 
THE DISTANT AIRSHIP. 

(Fort Myer, Va., September 10, 1908.) 

wonder, which the poet said should be ! 

From other years be set apart this year 

Which marks an era new in man's career, 
Since air is added unto earth and sea 
As his domain! Treasured the name shall be 

Of Orville Wright! An hour I watched him veer 

His airy craft above the forest clear 
Till twilight's deepening gloom blurred man and tree. 

As ship on some fair bay 'twixt wooded shore 
And cloudy headland sails through calm or flaw, 
So sailed this craft, its pinions flashing bright ; 
Or like that mighty Roc of Arab lore, 

With neck and legs out-thrust, which Sinbad saw, 
In flight across the sun, obscure the light. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

October 20, 19 10. 
130 



xun. 
IMMANUEL KANT 



* * * und nur so fern glauben, dem g&tllichen Willen 
gent'dss zu sein, als wir das Sittengesetz * * * heilig 
halten, ihm dadurch allein s« dienen glauben, dass wir das 
Weltbeste an uns und an Andern befordern. 

■ — Kant: Kritik der Reinen Vernunft 



His will was strong, hearing man's age-long cry, 
To ponder day by day the swarming earth, 

And night by night, alone, the starry sky, 

Seeking through all the maze of death and birth 

Some harmony of underlying laws : 

The irreducible antinomies 
(Of time and space and of the primal cause) 

Within the human mind, not less were his ! 

A subtle spirit, strong: he stood upright 

Where other men had bent: his highest need 

Without, he said, the cloudless sky of night — 
The moral law within, his only creed. 

Would all might love pure truth as much as he 
And find stern duty's joy, which made him free ! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

October 21, 26, 27, 1910. 
131 



xuv. 
WALDEN POND. 

(September 22, 1910.) 

"The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation 
is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it." 
— Thoreau. 

Here dwelt, remote from men, a soul with wings ! 

For him was the growing world an open book 
Wherein he read delectable fair things ! 

His altar, Earth, on him god Pan did look ! 

He searched for Truth afield, as all men should, 
Read deep the mystic book of human life; 

Scorned civic shams; found Nature ever good; 
And lived his inner life, through calm and strife ! 

This is the shore he loved, here stood his cot. 

The blue lake gleams, the autumn woods are fair; 

Warm shines the sun, crows call, bees murmur here; 
The Master's spirit fills the quiet air, 
And all the land holds memory of the seer 
Whose cairn high-piled marks here a sacred spot. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

October 30, and November 1, 1910. 

132 



XLV. 
MEISSONIER'S CAVALIER. 

(In the Wallace Collection in London) 

The Flower of France her chivalry displays, 

Those knights who knew not fear nor bore reproach : 

And best she had this artistry portrays ! 
Here is a moving figure whose approach 

We hail with joy, as down the somber stair 
Gaily he trips, to palace hall perchance, 

Humming the while a careless merry air. 
Some worthy son is this of ancient France : 

It well might chance Vicomte de Bragelonne, 
So frank and manly is his handsome face, 

Raoul himself, with all his trappings on, 
And every movement full of strength and grace ! 

Great painter, thou canst make a vanished age 
As much alive as Dumas' stirring page! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, November 6, 1910. 

133 



XLVI. 
BEETHOVEN (II). 

Great symphonist, and dear! whose tones unlock 
The soul of rhythmic sound ! thy precious name 
Is writ on high in lordly hall of Fame, 

Where lesser names for entrance vainly knock! 

Low-born, ill-bred, of Rhenish common stock, 
Thy simple forbears all unknown to Fame — 
Nathless thy name tops highest German name — 

A sunlit soaring crag, rock piled on rock! 

As Dante trod the ways of Heaven and Hell, 
Among the dead unscathed by Poesy led; 

This lonely soul, through Music's heavenly door 

Entered, a mortal man, God's citadel, 
The Holy of Holies named; and there was wed 
To Heaven-heard noble tone-forms evermore. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

November 12, 19 10. 

134 



XXVII. 

COMPASSION. 

No lowliest life made sad by circumstance, 

But caught her eye and moved her tender heart ! 

How oft did words and deeds of love upstart 
At sight of child cast down by luckless chance, 
Or bird with broken wing, O tender glance ! 

Or sad-eyed hungry beast in toilsome cart ! 

And hence her life is sacred and apart 
From selfish lives of sad irrelevance. 

For most great loves cast out all lesser ones, 
Like grief to selfish ends unwitting brought, 
But dearer loves have wider range of thought 
To all include who need their magic touch, 
Their winsome grace ! Alas, not over much 
Such breadth of love finds place among Earth's sons. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, November 13, 19 10. 
135 



XI, VIII. 
THE BRIDE OF THE SEA. 

(Vide Ovid's Metamorphoses.) 

The watery sport hath been fair Caenis' doom, 

Her slender form the rude god presses sore, 
O'erwhelmed, borne down, for cries she hath no room. 

Poseidon works his will! A maid no more, 
In coral groves for him she now must bloom. 

The god has fled the mocking, cruel shore, 
But deep within sea caverns' twilight gloom, 

His raucous laughter echoes o'er and o'er! 

And ships and bones of men that here find tomb, 

Dreaming Apollo comes with shafts of light 
To break at last the sea god's vengeful doom, 
Irresolutely stir the deep sea floor, 
To hope a moment moved in fateful night, 
Then sink forlorn to heavy rest once more. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

November 15, 1910. 

136 



xux. 
WEDDED LIFE. 

"The woman's cause is man's; they rise or sink 
Together, dwarf' d or godlike, bond or free." 
— Tennyson. 

He doth forget his wife whom self makes blind ! 
And though there are high souls, an honored few, 
The mass take happiness for just their due, 

Making but scant amends to womankind, 

Or to the Gods, for wedded peace of mind ! 
"Tis strange how soon the vulgar cynic's view 
Supplants high chivalry the lover knew! 

Is then first state, or last, more grossly blind? 

Whose will is strong and pure, with womankind 
May walk among the Gods, year in, year out! 

For wedded bliss to some is foolish theme, 
As cuckoo cloudtown every man may doubt, 
Yet there are those to whom it marks no dream 
A high, pure joy in others' joy to find! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

November 17, 1910. 

137 



HER FACE. 

What bliss to me it brought words cannot tell ! 

A simple old-time face, divinely quaint, 

Refined and pure and strong, without a taint 
Of lowborn selfishness, or brooding hell 
Of restlessness our age knows all too well, 

Which wholly woman dear is yet half saint : 

Such faces fair Luini loved to paint, 
And such in highest moments Raphael. 

In lonely hours her face comes back to me, 
Bearing the faint sweet smile it knew so well ; 
I hear no voice, but love beams in her eyes, 
And moving lips would speak I know if free ; 
So I am comforted, and daily dwell 

In high sweet thoughts and deeds, by grief made wise. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, November 27, 1910. 
138 



u. 

HER GRAVE AND MINE: NOVEMBER 

(Woods Hole, Mass.) 

November days begin with sun and wind ! 

The autumn lingers still on this loved shore 
As loath to yield to winter blasts unkind 

A spot so fair. Of wealth what priceless store : 

Where now the fringe of marsh grass golden glows, 
Beside the bright blue sea — where now the hills 

Are robed in royal purples, gold and rose! 
A brooding haze the peaceful landscape fills, 

As though the mild September hours were here, 
And sunny days would never cease to be. 

All this to Nature-lover's heart is dear 

As once long since 'twas dear to you and me ; 

But now the golden round counts not at all, 
For us 'tis ashen gray — from spring to fall. 



Lines i, 5, 6 and 7 in October at Woods Hole, 

The remainder at 1460 Belmont Street, November 27, 1910. 

139 



UI. 
DE PROFUNDIS. 

As worn I stumble down the sunset slope, 

O'er brevity of life despondent grown, 
I think sometimes we cheat ourselves with hope, 

As foolish children some pet bird has flown, 

Who think it will return another morn, 
But never find again their precious bird. 

We are but fleeting cries of sorrow born, 
The tempter saith — that lower self oft heard 

When sorrow walks abroad and hope is faint; 

We are but ripened leaves upon life's tree, 
And winter days are near with their shrill plaint: 

We shall be swept away, nor new life see ! 

Who knows? The whole world groans in bitter plight, 
Yet hope, divine, will not be silenced quite. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

November 29, 1910. 
140 



hill. 
THE DIVINE LOVE. 

All tends to good, all life is one in span : 

The Love Divine beneath its brooding wings, 
Tender as mother's love, enfolds all things 

That live and move, from monad unto man; 

And what to us seems wrong in God's vast plan, 
To our disturbed and faulty vision clings, 
As low-hung clouds obscure the lark that sings, 

Or blot Polaris and Aldebaran. 

Cross-questionings most terrible arise, 

And few there are of those to knowledge wed, 
Who will admit such faith as aught but lies; 

Yet is not this Great Love the one sole thing 
To satisfy a hungering world? To bring 
A deep sweet peace? To wake the sordid dead? 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

November 27, and 30, 19 10. 
141 



LIV. 
VICTOR HUGO. 

(On reading Les Travailleurs de la Mer.) 

Somber painter ! The immensities of space 
Beat procreant hammer strokes upon thy brain 
Till thou couldst scarcely bear the parturient strain, 

And light and darkness thrown across Earth's face, 

On myriad forms of life, moved thee to trace 
Time linked to Space in endless moving chain 
Of circumstance, enfolding joy and pain 

With all their subtle shades in one embrace! 

On such a moving background didst thou paint 
The somber tragedy of human life : 
Of evil dominant, of bloody strife, 
Of strong hearts overcome and beating faint, 

Of youth and hope made sick by long delays, 
Of Destiny's black form shadowing man's ways! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

December 2, and 4, 1910. 

142 



IV. 
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT 

(Concord, September 22, 1910.) 

Pale sunshine floods the quiet country side, 
The autumn hours a summer memory keep, 
Birds call, bees hum, the grass-hid crickets cheep : 

There, yellowing sunward, stretch her meadows wide, 

Here hillside pines their old sweet music make. 
A sacred silence holds me brooding near 
This desolate old place to her once dear, 

And dear to us in turn for her sweet sake. 

Her apple trees are gone but not her elms : 

Beneath their mighty shade she welcomed friends 
Who loved and used this world for lofty ends, 

Which have not fled with them to unknown realms. 

Mock-orange blossoms still about the door,* 
But not for her do bees its nectar store. 

Evening of December 7, 1910. 



*Variant: In girlhood's heart her words were impulse sown, 
Nobly to play life's part when woman grown. 

Note: Miss Alcott died March 6, 1888. A very pleasing bust of her by 
F. Edwin Elwell may be seen in the Concord Library. The Alcott house, 
tenantless and fallen to ruin, stands by the roadside at the extreme end 
of Concord village, and just below the wooded hillside mentioned as 
"Hawthorne's Walk" in Sonnet LXVIII. On the southeast side, thehouse 
is screened partly from the highway by a clump of ragged old spruce or fir 
trees, and immediately in front of the old wooden house on either side of 
the dooryard path are the two ancient elms under one of which, surrounding 
the trunk, is a rude wooden seat used by the family. In the dooryard are 
lilies of the valley, day-lilies, mock orange and white waxberry bushes. 
Bees were storing honey in the gable. On the other side of the highway 
is a wide brook-traversed meadow. The apple trees were in a small open 
space to the west of the house between the road and the wooded hillside. 
On the east side of the house is a wooded lane rising into the near forest, 
and separating the place from the Hawthorne house. The forest consists 
of many sorts of trees: pine, spruce, tamarack, locust, oak, chestnut, ash, 
birch, cherry, elm, maple, linden. Under foot grow Clintonia, Celandine 
and Smilacina bifolia. Along the hillside path in the woods are rude seats, 
fixed between the tree trunks probably by Hawthorne himself. 

143 



LVI. 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 

High-placed lone pine in our bleak northern land, 
Thy fragrant boughs distill a healing balm, 
And chant their mystic runes in storm or calm ; 

Thy roots strike deep beyond the shifting sand 

To living wells ; thy sun-flecked shadow thrown 
Across the world makes joy of men more bright; 
Thy star-crowned branches front the silent night ; 

And all the pure sweet winds of heaven blown 

Find entrance large to greet the winged things 
And frailer forms that love to shelter here. 
An elemental strength, to Nature near, 

Pervades thy trunk and in each fiber clings. 

And dead in part wert thou, like such a tree, 
Long, long ere Urdar Norns did set thee free. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

December 16, 1910. 
144 



IvVII. 

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 

(In memory of his Early Italian Poets.) 

Brother, if thou hadst done no dearer thing 
Than make this one small book of golden verse, 
Thy name to latest days should men rehearse, 

Of few, as one who knew heart's deep to sing. 

The fierce impassioned joy and grief that spring 
From old Italia's heart, in prayer and curse, 
Transplanted here to noble English verse, 

Quiver and rise upon high soaring wing. 

Sweet songs touching the heart are these old lays, 

And fair the company by Dante led. 
I see their proud sweet foreheads wreathed with bays, 
And worthily among the crowned dead, 
Moves on, as in a dream, stately and slow, 
Our painter-bard, to Dante bending low. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, December 18, 1910. 
H5 



LVIII. 
HALLEY'S COMET. 

(April, 1910.) 

Vast streamer, ghostly pale in eastern sky- 
Preceding dawn ! No thrill of terror now 
Thy apparition stirs, no pious vow! 

Grim war, hushed pestilence, gaunt famine's cry 

O'er earth with thee no more their courses fly. 

Science hath shorn thy crest! Man fears not now, 
But questioning uplifts his starlit brow 

To ether where thy vapors wasting lie. 

Measureless ways and cycles of time are thine, 
I<one journeyer through the mighty void of space 
Of thy swift flight leaving in heaven no trace! 
The mind is lost before the power divine 

That sweeps this splendid pennant to and fro 
In far-off space while centuries come and go. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

December 20, and 23, 19 10. 
146 



LIX. 

DANTE. 

Disconsolate and stern old Tuscan bard, 
The music of thy words in rhythmic swell 
Makes one well-nigh forget the dreadful hell 

That punisheth sworn enemies full hard 

In thine Inferno's deep ! We now discard 
The mediseval dream but cannot tell 
The gain, since here in such deep pain we dwell, 

To hope so lost, that joy of life is marred. 

Only, sometimes, we do forget our own — 
Beholding all thy grief, and that high sense 
In thee of things divine, the recompense 

For mortal woes; or listing those sweet strains 
Of love and death, like notes from wind-harp blown, 
Whereby thy lofty spirit eased hell's pains! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

January 3, 191 1. 
147 



LX. 
DANTE IN RAVENNA. 

Under Ravenna's pines where waters gleam, 
Musing, his feet move slow ! His soul, I wis, 
Is set once more on youth and Beatrice, 

In Florence fair, beside the Arno stream ! 

He walks absorbed as one in some deep dream : 
For youth and love have showered on him their bliss, 
Since Beatrice hath yielded lips to kiss, 

And twinned are hearts that beat, and eyes that beam. 

Dreaming the dear old days of youth and pride, 
His lady kind, his Florence doubly fair 
With spring's sweet censer swung in all her air, 
The poet's lonely face is glorified, 

Like angel's face who sees his risen Lord 

And hears the orchestral harps in Heaven accord ! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Evenings of January 5 and 6, 191 1. 
148 



txi. 

SWEDENBORG. 

He walks, I think, in crowned splendor far 
Within that inmost Heaven of his deep dream, 
Among those angels lost to Faith's faint gleam, 

Because in light more bright than sun or star, 

Before their I/Ord revealed, they ever are, 

And see and know that Truth which reigns supreme! 
High thought and noble deed, on earth his theme, 

Find scope in this third Heaven with naught to mar. 

Here wedded to a tender soul that clings, 
Forever wandering on in mystic joy 

Through deep arcana of the timeless space, 
They two, as one, do dream of holy things, 
In light and life and love without alloy, 

Flowing from God to saints of perfect grace. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, January 8, 191 1. 
149 



LXII. 
THE FELLOWSHIP OF SAINTS 

If still she hath her will in that far clime 
Or state of heaven, whereto our wishes fond 
Consign the dead, her eager thoughts respond 

To myriad pulses of that life sublime, 

Faint glimpst in prophet's word and poet's rhyme; 
And as of old on earth, so now beyond 
Time's reach, at one is she in spirit bond 

With those great dead who are the crown of Time! 

And this high thought, daily in life outwrought 
As golden deed, were means to dry all tears 

Begot of lonely hours when life seems naught, 
To make these desolate years with their low fears, 

Transfigured in the light that hope has brought, 
Become the shining crown of all earth's years. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

January 14, 15, 16 and 19, 1911. 

ISO 



LXIII. 

DAY-DREAMS. 

(Road beyond Nobska, Woods Hole, Mass., August, 1910.) 

Close shut within her ivory house of dreams, 
Where willow nods and spicy Clethra blows, 
Upon a wayside pool the lily grows. 
Beyond her sedgy bar the blue main gleams, 
And o'er dark pines the light of sunset streams. 
Her chalice opens to the morning sun, 
She knows not evening's glory now begun : 
Or sunset's red and gold, or bright moonbeams. 

Close shut, she hears the piping frog's refrain , 

The droning of the dusty-coated bee, 
The crow's home call, the veery's wild sweet strain, 
The swell and murmur of the sunlit sea: 

Yea, most of all, the main, soft in her dream, 
Blows to her cradle songs from the far Gulf -stream. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

January 20, 191 1. 
151 



LXIV. 

PENZANCE. 

(At Woods Hole, Mass.) 

The midtide now holds sway upon the deep ! 

With rush and roar, in whirling masses torn, 
Through this swart channel's throat the waters sweep 

From sea to sea, restless for distant bourne. 
On thrust in myriad droves, like helpless sheep 

By howling wolves pursued, dispersed and shorn, 
The curling waves in white crests rush and leap 

With bleat and moan o'er black rocks water-worn. 

The tide has turned the while my dream takes form, 
And now again the troubled waters sleep 
Full-breasted calm, where turmoil stirred the deep. 
O melancholy heart, whose ebb and flow 
Are like this flood's resistless come and go, 
When wilt thou learn that calm doth follow storm? 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

January 23, 191 1. 
152 



LXV. 
THE WET STREET. 

How often, dear, spellbound, together here 
At our high window-view, we stood on nights 
Like this wild night, to watch the shifting sights 

Of the long wet street, reflected water-clear ! 

Our warm hands clasped, in lovers' silence dear, 
Gazing upon the hundred mirrored lights, 
We stood in darkness, making wild soul flights 

Into the night and storm — yet free of fear! 

Now hast thou gone into a deeper night 

Whose black folds yield no light to make aware, 
Howe'er we strain, of what lies hidden there. 

Yet when we parted fortune that drear night, 
In spite of weakness wert thou free of fear, 
And brave, as ever thou wert brave, my dear! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, January 29, 191 1. 
153 



LXVI. 
MUTABILITY (I). 

Ah me, since thou art gone, what lonely hours, 
What dreary wastes of time, are my estate ! 

Of old here shone the sun, here bloomed gay flowers, 
But now the fields we trod are desolate! 

No kindling light illumes my spirit towers, 
No setting sun brings back my vanished mate, 

Abjectly now my once proud spirit cowers, 
Too much to bear is this last blow of Fate ! 

Yet hearts break not, and Time for our relief 
Slow softens and transfigures bitter grief, 
Until of joys it doth become the chief. 

How strange this life, whose forces are not free 

To make past grief and present peace agree 

That man through all his years one mind should be! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

March 11, 1911. 
154 



I/XVII. 

BUDDHA: A PRAYER. 

"Forbearance was our Buddha wont to teach," 
So runs the sweet and simple doctrine old; 
"Root out the love of self," that it may hold 
No more man's spirit chained; and teach and preach 
The ways of tenderness, my ways, to each : 
So shall divine compassion's robe enfold 
Earth's sorrowing ones; from heart of man be rolled 
The burden old ; peace he within his reach. 

The dear Lord Buddha's tender heart be ours, 
And ours his will to live the nobler life 
That doth, forget its own in others' needs, 
Finding its strength in deeds more than in creeds, 
And preaching peace, remote from selfish strife, 
For man and beast, the sport of unseen powers. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday evening, March 19, 191 1. 
155 



LXVIII. 
HAWTHORNE'S HILLSIDE WALK 

(Concord, September 22, 1910.) 

A lone wood-path that winds about a hill : 
A thousand times his feet have paced it o'er, 
The while he let his eerie fancy soar, 

Or delved in gloom some deep ancestral ill. 

Faunus himself might dwell in place so still : 
Fair wild things grow upon the forest-floor ; 
Jays call, the squirrel chatters at his door; 

Balsamic odors faint the breezes fill. 

I watch a pappus, zephyr sways at will; 

A measure worm, frail as the down blown o'er, 
On swinging silken thread his body lower; 

And think: Man has short time for good or ill. 

Gone he who trod this wood and romance made, 
But still his spirit haunts its gloomy shade. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

March 21, 1911. 
156 



LXIX. 

AFTER READING FREDERIC 
HARRISON. 

In second state that conscious self reveals, 
I am not sure that she will live again, 
This woman whom I loved — for what know men 
Of the deep secrets the universe conceals? 
The soul knows what it sees, and what it feels, 
Not how new life should be when senses rust, 
Or consciousness when brain and nerves are dust. 
Alone with things well-proved the Comtist deals. 

But this one truth is sure, and no mean thing: 
Her pure sweet deeds will ever wider flow, 
In other lives unceasing live and grow, 
As priceless part of earth's great heritage. 
And now in me they live and kindling bring 

Sweet thoughts and holy joys that grief assuage. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday evening, April 2, 191 1. 
157 



LXX. 

APRIL XIII. 

Iyife's music still rolls sweet upon my tongue; 

The years they give new zest to brim its wine; 
I hold not life, though old, as song outsung, 

But voice of things eternal and divine. 

Yet would I be once more a wandering boy, 
In hemlock forests dim, half -glimpsing Pan, 

Or lone at sunset hour shouting my joy 
In lilied meadows far from haunts of man, 

Dreaming again my dreams, singing my songs, 
On fire with all life's mystery to cope, 

Heart set on truths for which the spirit longs, 
And glowing through the quest a boy's fine hope. 

In calmer mood than once but joyous still, 
Fronting the Soul of All, I wait His will. 



On train, Buffalo to Washington, April 13, 191 1, 

(Eighteenth Anniversary of our marriage.) 
158 



LXXI. 

EASTERTIDE. 

Now buds and blooms and sings the awakening year, 
Now stirs in wood and field so long forlorn 
A genial sense that cries : Awake, adorn, 

The god of life is born again, is here, 

The green-robed festal summer days are near ! 
And though not now of those to whom is born 
The joy of risen Lord on Easter morn, 

In pagan ways I hold the day most dear ! 

My Lord was never born, and never dead ! 
Through Him to-day I rise toward endless being; 
He thrills with life to earth's remotest bound 
All things that are; and through the vast profound 
Of utmost being, wills and works all-seeing, 
His law and justice unto mercy wed. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, April 16, 191 1. 
159 



LXXII. 
THE ARCTIC NIGHT. 

The igloo reeks with drowsy Esquimaux, 
And I have crept into the bitter night, 
A space to stand among the stars upright: 

Far south the wandering Pleiades sail low; 

Round zenith roll the bears ; the heavens glow 
With myriad stars ; tall streamers ghostly slight 
Weave on the sky their weird unearthly light; 

The arctic winds shrill over wastes of snow. 

To heaven I raise the voice of my despair, 
Its deeps of awful stars heed not my cry. 
A thousand leagues beyond this icebound shore, 
A woman waits beside a cottage door, 
And children's voices name the name I bear. 
O God, my God, of loneliness I die! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

April 22 and 23, 191 1. 
160 



LXXIII. 

TO MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF. 

(On re-reading her Journal.) 

thou of the red-gold hair and passionate heart, 
Daughter of Muscovy whose soul was France, 
Thy Book of Hours, intense, brought me by chance, 

Long since, its message fraught with sorrow's smart, 

Love's poignancy unlulled by dreams of Art, 

And all the wild and whirling thoughts that dance 
Their frenzy through the brain when those who glance 

The path Love treads with him may have no part! 

O bittersweet those days of France and brief, 
Too brief for love's desire, that life of thine 

Whose candle's light outblown yet shines full bright 
Across the night of time, a fire divine, 

Companioning as star, now red now white, 
The way of those who walk with love and grief. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

May 31, 1911. 



161 



LXXIV. 
GOD AND THE UNIVERSE. 

His will alone that rhythmic force explains, 
Which cell on cell of tiniest being shows — 
And star dust old not less than new-born rose, 

But His deep Self incognito remains : 

In all earth's realm, I find not Him who reigns, 
And vain the search where old Antares throws 
A ruddy flame, or lone Arcturus glows. 

Alone His finger prints the clay retains. 

Man proud, some say: He dwells within the soul; 
And some: He liveth not; and mournful some: 
He wills but hath not yet to pity come ;* 
And some with me : He is our final goal, 

He hides within the deeps, withdrawn, world-vast, 
That man through search may come to Him at last. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

June 27, 28, 191 1. 



*Hardy: The Dynasts. 

162 



IvXXV. 

THEODORE PARKER. 

'Our Father Mother God," often he said, 

Absorbed in those deep prayers that moved his age, 
And strangely move us still from silent page! 
On him Eternal Life its glory shed, 
Its peace was his, its strength his spirit fed, 
Then rising god-like in his heritage, 
He thundered forth his modern prophet's rage 
On shameful deeds and creeds, to stir men dead! 

Now sleeps he where the fragrant iris blooms, 
And rossignols sing love on dewy tombs. 

Not far from Landor's grave his own is made, 
In that fair Tuscan land both loved so well, 
And grandly won — those things for which he prayed- 
His great soul now in peace with God may dwell. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

July 4-6, 191 1 

163 



LXXVI. 
THE BRIDAL MAY. 

She comes, my lady Spring, bride-decked and fair, 
The rustling stir of silken robes I hear, 
The faint pink apple blooms I scent full near, 

Wherewith for Iyove she binds her sunny hair ! 

At sight of May old Time forgets his care, 
So full her coming floods, with murmurs dear, 
And light and life, the joyous budding year — 

And hearts of men and maids, full many a pair ! 

Of dainty springs long gone our Ronsard sung, 

And Filipepi knew the joy she brings, 
But neither painters old, nor lovers young, 

Nor poet's honeyed tongue, can image clear 
The deep, sweet joy that in us rings and sings, 
When lady Flora wakes the budding year ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday p. m., July 9, 191 1. 
164 



LXXVII. 

INFLUENCE. 

O kindred soul, whose thoughts in me are rife! 
How hath her spirit moved me since those days, 
Long told, when first I knew her gracious ways, 
And all the sacred deeps of that still life 
So far removed from passion's heat and strife! 
And what firm hold it hath upon me still, 
In these lone years, working its gentle will 
E'en more than when of old I called her wife! 

How deep and sweet and pure and strong is love, 

To hold men unto high ideals fast ! 
It clothes the soul as garbs the hand a glove, 
And makes the memory of a word or glance 
A moving power long after life has past, 
A subtle fragrance which the years enhance. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday p. m., July 23, 191 1. 
165 



LXXVIII. 

HOMER. 

Blind singer of the glorious Argive days, 
When gods were near and all her sons were strong, 
The wine-dark seas roll evermore their song, 

High pitched or low, through thine immortal lays ! 

The sea, the shore! As dubious battle sways, 

With clang of arms on bronze, that shouting throng 
Beside the ships, I hear an over-song 

Of waves and flapping sails and creaking stays. 

Not less thou mak'st alive the shining hosts 
That on Olympian heights their nectar sip, 
Careless to while away the joyous hour; 

And that gray underworld of gibbering ghosts 
Odysseus saw, and heard, when blood touched lip, 
Mourn piteously the loss of light and power. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday p. m., August 20, 191 1. 
166 



LXXIX. 
AN AUGUST NIGHT (I). 

(Woods Hole, Mass.) 

The damp salt wind this lonely eventide 
From heart of open sea comes fresh to me. 
This wind I love hath blown o'er ships at sea 

And nameless things that swim its waters wide, 

The thousand coiling shapes those waters hide, 
Past light-ships lone, o'er sailors' graves at sea, 
O'er fog banks broad, past icebergs swimming free, 

And wrecks that list to every wandering tide. 

The shrill cicada fills the air with song : 
Heartsick am I because my love is dead. 

The winds are loosed, I hear the salt sea call, 
O'er Naushon sinks a half moon fiery red. 
soul of man, thy joy and woe are all 
In these wild waters typed — and surge sea-strong! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, Sunday evening, August 20, 191 1. 

(Notes last August by the shore.) 
167 



LXXX. 

A SUMMER LANDSCAPE. 

Below the peaceful valley sleeps, cloudfree: 
Watching its wind-swept fields of golden rye 
Under the beechen shade, I dreaming lie 

Where meadows bend in waves like a summer sea. 

With drone of bees their warm scent floats to me; 

From bush to tree the wood-birds twittering fly; 

I hear a babbling brook, the school boy's cry, 
A tinkling bell, the ring of axe on tree. 

Such scenes my youth beheld and hers as well, 
But sundered far were we, nor dreamed that Time 
Would bring us face to face, and heart to heart. 

O Love, magician old, a mighty spell 
You wove about our hearts, that time nor clime 
For us henceforth held joy, if lived apart ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sestet, June, 1910; octave, August 23, 1911. 



Note: How little a thing may serve to make a poet happy or sad is well 
illustrated in the octave of this sonnet. On a day in June I felt it all in a 
fluid state, so to speak, in what was perhaps the most exquisite five minutes 
of my whole life. It would have been perfectly easy then to have put it 
upon paper worthily, but I was in the midst of something else and thrust 
it aside. Soon afterwards I wrote the sestet, but the octave would not 
return for more than a year, and now lacks all the glory of the waking 
dream which suggested it. 

168 



LXXXI. 

CIRCE. 

Music, rich scent, dim lights, and purple glooms 
Mark her domain. There laughter flows and wine, 
Till a vaporous mist makes Circe seem divine, 

To outward view so fair the goddess blooms. 

There pallid suitors endless throng her rooms, 
On whom a space she smiles, and then, as swine, 
Drives out those lovers scorned, who now must pine 

In loathsomeness their never-ending dooms. 

But deep within her secret heart she saith: 
Always my joy is mother of my woe, 
For whom I love, that one do I destroy. 

Why unto me come they of mortal breath? 
One death holds all ! Weary am I, who know 
How false love cheats the heart of man and boy! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

August 30, 1 91 1. 

169 



LXXXII. 
GOETHE WHEN OLD. 

Traced on the all-recording book of Fate 
His lustrous name in golden cursive glows, 
The garnered wisdom of the world he knows, 

And pilgrims come in throng to name him great, 

Who far withdrawn from action's way and late, 
In haste, as one who on a journey goes, 
Life's garden walks, to pluck the fairest rose 

In all her vast cloud-canopied estate. 

The master singer worshipped beauty's form, 
And yet despite his lore of man and earth, 
I cannot think true love to him revealed, 
Or much of woman's heart, whose deeps are sealed 
To all who worship not an inner norm 
As clean and stainless as a lily's birth. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

September 4, 191 1. 
170 



LXXXIII. 
THE DEAD CITY. 

(Pompeii, March 18, 1906.) 

Here crimson poppies blossomed long ago 
And lilies pale their twilight fragrance shed, 

Here minstrel lovers wandered to and fro, 

Here songs and jests and noise the swift hours sped. 

Came then the awful mountain's warning glow, 
Unheeded of the throng to pleasure wed, 

And then the eternal silence hushed and slow 
Flooding oblivion on the many dead. 

From Forum sod the dandelions gleam 

In pale March sun; with endless hum of bees,* 
Old days, old dreams, are sounding in our ears. 

We linger near the Doric shrine and seem, 
On its ancient shore, to hear the wash of seas 

And shouts of men, faint borne from far-off years. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

September 10 and 11, 1911. 



•Solitary bees, nesting in large numbers in a sand bank below the 
temple. The former sea shore at the foot of the city is now a mile and a 
quarter inland. Seneeio and purple fumitory were also in blossom in the 
sod of the Forum Triangulare, and in the neighboring fields we saw cauli - 
flower, almond or apricot, and iris in blossom. 

171 



LXXXIV. 
RAIN ON THE ROOF. 

O thrumming finger-tips of gentle rain, 

What heart doth not thy tender music know, 

The lull piano, pianissimo ! 
The vague mysterious chords of life sound plain 
When slumber's veil by thee is rent in twain, 

Hours of the deep night, revolving slow; 

Or days in youth beneath the rafters low, 
On fragrant hay, books closed to hear thy strain. 

Oh, I remember how you loved it, Dear, 
This music written in an unknown scale, 

Speaking to us of vague subconscious things : 
A vast of tones beyond our ears to hear, 
A world of harmony beyond our pale, 

For those to feel in whom pure spirit sings. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, September 17, 191 1. 

172 



LXXXV. 

THE HARMONIES OF LIFE. 

Too fair wert thou to fade as rose half -blown ! 
No loveliest face of master workman old, 
In alabaster carved, or marble cold, 

Or on the canvas lined, exceeds thine own 

In beauty pure wherein is spirit shown ! 
That luminous deep self thy smiles unfold, 
To all would I make known as purest gold, 

Not hoard as miser hoards for self alone. 

What magic power hath beauty o'er the mind, 
When goodness' self thereto as soul is joined, 
And grace, the fairest flower of woman's life! 
Then all the harmonies in one are twined 

To make, as here, from many pasts purloined, 
The noble woman and the tender wife. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, September 17, 1911. 
173 



LXXXVI. 

THE UNIVERSAL GOD. 

Vast are His plans! His purpose who can show? 
His Providence the shining ones may know, 
But we are left in darkness here below, 
To grope, or glimpse such shifting lights as flow 

From search through nature and the world of mind, 
Those books whereon we pore, our God to find — 
Alas, so vast they are, and we so blind ! 
Yet would we think Him near, and not unkind, 

Only, than man, with other, larger ends; 
A subtile presence everywhere that lends 
All motion, light, and life; all comprehends; 
And in one harmony all discord blends. 

Dissevered now and in a twilight dim, 
How are we straitened till rejoined to Him. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

September 18, 191 1. 
174 



LXXXVII. 
LATE AUTUMN IN WASHINGTON. 

(November 21, 1910, near Fort Stevens.) 

The cold November sky is blue and bright, 
The oaks are red and gold and green and dun, 
The fields are neutral tints from summer won. 

The wondrous autumn glow fades into night, 

And I am lifted up to Rembrandt's height, 
As orange-brown the waves of setting sun 
O'er broad waste fields of shining sedge-grass run — 

Beholding all this miracle of light. 

O Time! How strange these fields should be the place 

O'er which with scream of shell rolled war's red flood ! 
Nathless here fought and fell men of our race, 
But not in strife against a common foe, 
For brother then in hate shed brother's blood, 
And all this mighty land was one dark woe. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, September 19, 191 1. 
(Notes last November.) 

i7S 



LXXXVIII. 

A CUBAN VALLEY. 

(In the Trinidad Mountains, March, 1904.) 

The sun is hot, the plains are brown and worn; 
Deep purple shadows lie along the hills ; 
Only the cane with green the landscape fills 
And distant Royal palms, whose crown half -shorn,* 
Seems some green temple's broken roof, up-borne 
On slender marble shafts that gleam in the sun ; 
Beyond, the mountain ranges jagged run; 
O'er all a wild storm-cloud is piled and torn. 

I sweep the landscape o'er from this vast hill, 

Joying in all I see — the distant mill, 

The huts, the palms, the sun, the storm-cloud's will, 
In hum of bee, in bird, in bur that clings — 
All save the rude watch towert whose aspect brings 
A sudden mournful thought of sterner things. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, September 24, 191 1. 



*To make thatch for huts. The trunk of this palm is snow-white. 
fUsed in the last Cuban war. 

176 



LXXXIX. 

YUMURI GORGE. 

(April 24, 1904.) 

Within the glen a solemn quiet reigns, 
Save when as now some lonely echo calls ; 
The tropic forest lines the lofty walls, 

Or green with trailing vines, or brown with stains. 

In pairs, above the still wood-shadowed stream, 
The green and crimson trogons flash like gems, 
While on the wall that wood and water hems, 

Entranced I gaze, as one in some fair dream. 

Without, calls evermore the mighty deep, 
Where bones of coral whiten all the shore; 

Within, beguiled and lulled, one well might crave 
To sail no more, but hour on hour to sleep : 
Romantic land, of many a hope the grave, 
Your witching beauty pulls my heartstrings sore! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

September 24, 191 1. 
177 



xc. 
SPINOZA. 

He cared not for man's gold, nor for his praise, 
Still less for his dispraise — an empty sound ! 
The perfect peace of God he sought and found, 
Content in poverty to spend his days, 
So he might walk with God the eternal ways, 

Might find that Truth our dull sense gropes in vain. 
That Mind of which all space is body and brain, 
And all phenomena the shadowy rays. 

God was his all! In Him he lived and moved 
To reach his being's end. The man is mad, 
His plodding neighbors said, and forthwith bade 
Him leave their synagogue, as it behooved : 

Far greater out, he moved the world as few, 
This gentle, God-inebriated Jew. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 21 and September 30, 191 1. 
178 



XCI. 

THE SABBATH BEFORE THE 
PASSOVER. 

(April 22, 1910.) 

'Tis good, in days when ancient faith is dead, 
To see the reverence Judah still bestows 
On his unseen fierce Yahweh whom he knows 

In the holy of holies reigns in lone Godhead. 

O awful God, for Thee the candles' gloom, 
The sweet deep prayers intoned in solemn state, 
The bread, the wine, the mead they consecrate ; 

The house itself a temple, room by room. 

Yet, awful God, thy days are numbered : 

A ceaseless worm gnaws at the temple's veil; 
The pillared sanctuary's hosts are fled; 

Astarte hath three parts within her mesh; 
And even thine own sons, stamped in the flesh, 
Forsake thy courts to walk with sons of Baal. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

October 1, 191 1. 

179 



XCII. 
VESUVIUS. 

(April 4 to 12, 1906.) 

Peasants flying from ruined homes, in throng; 

Torrents of smoke rolled high in murky air ;* 

Terrible rumblings from the volcano's lair; 
Lightning flashes in the coiling column, league long; 
The red flood crackling seaward, giant strong; 

Showers of rocks and stones to man's despair; 

Ashes and desolation everywhere, 
With no green thing to love, and no bird's song. 

Those fearful days strange things to us did show : 
Poor peasants crushed at prayer within their church ; 
Soldiers with food and making paths of search; 
Long lines of devotees, praying in turn 
To saints, to God, to mountain's fiery glow, 

To quench the flood their sins had caused to burn. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday evening, October 15, 191 1. 



*Nubes oriebatur cujus formam non alia magis arbor quam pinus 
expresserit. — Pliny: Anno 79. 

180 



XCIII. 
THE MYSTERY OF LIFE. 

The hills and plains of earth are one vast tomb; 
No spot that hath not been of man or beast 
Unwilling grave : life seems of all things least ! 
Full loth we go to make for others room, 
And in our going find but pain and gloom. 

Who may the dark of life and death declare? 
One thing devours another everywhere 
And all things wait but their eternal doom. 

No hope is there unless a Father's hand 

Sustain the dream-child's long and painful climb, 
Leading, in ways we do not understand, 
To far-off ends, and ever higher good. 
By such great hope made strong, men have withstood 
All mortal pains, all buffetings of Time. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday evening, October 22, 191 1. 



181 



XCIV. 
KEATS. 

(Rome, April 20, 1906.) 

O wistful boy — blowing those pipes of Pan 
In English fields besprent with morning dew, 
Trinacrian Theocritus once blew 

By fair Ionian sea to gladden man — 

Of golden singing days, how brief the span 

Dark Clotho spun ! Of longed-for things how few 
Were thine to hold! Only the bitter rue 

Distilled for thee its drink of Caliban. 

Those longing, luminous deep eyes of thine, 
They haunt us like a draught of bitter wine; 
And all that fierce desire to glean thy brain 
Of teeming thought comes over one like pain! 
Dear Keats, whose wounds Lethean waters lave, 
A blood-red rose I place upon thy grave. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

October 29, 1911. 

182 



xcv. 
SHELLEY'S GRAVE. 

(Protestant Cemetery, Rome, April 20, 1906.) 

Near Cestius' tomb his mournful ashes lie, 
In that close crowded village of the dead, 
Where dark the cypresses their mantles spread ! 

Small birds throng here when hawk and owlet cry, 

Sunshine and shadow here for mastery vie, 
The dripping rain falls on his lowly bed, 
The wind sobs through these aisles, but high o'erhead 

The birds trill songs of hope eternally. 

Sad heart, and dear, sleep peacefully and deep 

In this lone wood that once you loved so well! 
"Cor cordium," though earth thine ashes keep, 
Dead art thou not, but hast high place apart 
Within man's soul ! In thought's clear light, where dwell 
The fairest, noblest things, there, there, thou art I 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Evening of November 6, 1911. 
183 



XCVI. 

THE DEAD POET. 

Silenced the singer's lips, and closed his eyes : 

Noble, with upturned brow, and brave strong face 

Composed and still, how like Charlemagne he lies, 
Fallen but full of more than kingly grace! 

With Cymbeline close held to that dear breast, 
His form outlined by floods of weird moonlight, 

In God's own peace the singer now must rest, 
So rapt he lies, so still, in solemn night! 

The ringing master voice of English song 

Was silenced here! nay, more, noblest of men! 

Steadfast, he followed "the gleam," and did no wrong; 
His peer, therefore, we shall not see again. 

Nathless, the poet's gold, a priceless store 
For men who strive and hope, bides evermore! 



Park Avenue Hotel, New York, 

November 23 to 27, 191 1. 
184 



XCVII. 
TOLSTOI WHEN OLD. 

The bravest man the Russias ever grew, 

The noblest one since their great Peter born, 
He lashed the wicked great with his fine scorn,* 

And plead for common men their cause as few 

Could plead or dared to do. Great man and true, 
Though fitted royal places to adorn, 
He mowed his meadow lands and reaped his corn 

Content, so he might keep his Christ in view ! 

A peaceful mystic, flouting church and creed, 
A Russian to heart's core, and yet a voice 

Wherein sounds brotherhood for all who toil 
And suffer loss, bidding make God their choice — 
Lone voice in our mad age of sensuous greed 
Striving in vain to stem its wild turmoil ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 3, 1912. 



*See his open letter in the London Times (June 27, 1904) denouncing 
the war with Japan. 

185 



XCVIII. 

JESUS. 

The stainless one is brother to us all ! 

What though he dreamed his home of heavenly bliss! 

Are we not dreamers here? Give then to kiss 
His pierced hands, his feet, to list his call ! 

How dear to sail with him on Galilee, 
To walk and talk through fields of ripening wheat, 
And hear him cry to doubting ones: Take, eat, 

The letter kills, the spirit lives in me! 

Shall he not be our guide who dreams the best? 
His church and doctrine fade into the past, 
His dream remains. To that let men hold fast: 

God is our strength, our life-long eager quest. 

And unto whom shall come the Paraclete, 
To him all bitter things shall be made sweet. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, January 28, 1912, and earlier. 



186 



XCIX. 

SCIENCE. 

On gates of brass man knocks for evidence, 
And will not be denied : Science the key 
Wherewith he would unlock all mystery 

Of time and sense, of life and death, of whence, 

And whither borne! Appalling consequence! 

More than his wrath, God's vastness frightens me, 
His star-clouds wheel vast orbits endlessly, 

His yawning gulfs of space whelm all my sense. 

Yet are the stars of selfsame elements 
As earth and man : if they by law are whirled, 

The Cosmos one, then must the near and small 
Foretell the great and far, and all the world 
Of supersensuous things ring true to call, 
And God himself be like the world of sense. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 28, 1912. 
187 



c. 
ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI 

One should be maiden pure, of him to sing, 

The gentle one who died on Calvary, 

Accurst in Judah, loved in Galilee, 
And hailed of all the lowly poor as king. 

From march triumphal where hosannas ring 

To that despairing cry upon the tree! 

How swift the way, how sad and lone was he ! 
Yet still to him the sorrowful do cling. 

O disillusioned brother! Thy mournful cry, 

I,oud sounding through the melancholy years, 
Is voice of all flesh in its agony! 

"My God, my God!" ascend with groans and tears 
The quavering cries of men who fear to die, 

And though He answers not, I think God hears. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 25, 27 and 29, 1912. 



188 



CII. 
COMPENSATION. 

Your death and mine make room for babes unborn ; 

The blast that whelms Armada saves a State ; 
The Nile that drowns a plain brings Egypt corn; 

Decadent Rome leaves Europe bold and great. 

All things fall equal in the scales of Time ! 

Who will may find a thousand parallels 
Since man was born from primal spawn and slime ; 

On one alone my thought insistent dwells : 

For her lost years of earth may heaven atone 
Since love must hold rich life as more than breath, 

And hope unweariedly to find its own 

Beyond the solemn barred gates of Death. 

God let me then in her sweet spirit dwell, 
Believing, though alone, that all is well. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Feb. 4, and March 23, 191 2 
189 






cm. 
A CHILD'S SPIRIT. 

The freshness of the morning dwelt in her: 
A dewy purity of maiden bloom, 
Like wild rose bordering a forest's gloom, 

Or lily on a stream faint ripples stir — ■ 

The joy of childhood lingering on, as 't were, 
Within the woman grown : angel for whom 
All somber messengers of life make room 

With gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. 

Gay spirit of the child within us all! 

How art thou whelmed beneath convention's gloom, 
Where all sweet impulses of youth lie drowned 
In lees of talk a silly world lets fall ! 
Poor world, that hath not one bright hope to bloom 
In place of all snatched flowers the child has found ! 



~> 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Octave: 1st 4 lines November, 191 1, in New York, last 4, 

February 4, 19 12. 

Sestet: March 24 to 30, 1912. 

190 



CIV. 

POESY. 

To dwell in Arcady ! To hear that horn 
Remotely echoing through woodland ways 
That Milton heard, and Wordsworth all his days, 

Were means to greet each heavy-laden morn, 

Each wan-hued eventide, of sorrow born, 

With their own calm and unperturbed gaze — 
So sure lies there the home, beyond all praise, 

Of deep sweet peace, no fate can render lorn. 

Where then is Arcady? 'Tis where he lives 

Whose sylvan thoughts flow on in peaceful vein, 
Unvexed by vexing ways, since there Zeus gives 
Sweet hope to all. 'Tis that divine estate 
Within the soul which men do nominate 
High Poesy, Apollo's fair domain. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

April 28, 1912. 

191 



cv. 
THE BODY OF GOD. 

Not that dear mystic of the sacred shore, 

Preaching God's love to man, with face aglow, 
And life as pure as fields of driven snow, 

Nor yet that bread his saints have knelt before, 

Soon twice a thousand years, and still adore 

When solemn mass is sung, voice hushed and slow, 
Doth surely unto me God's body show, 

Wherein upborne and permeate we soar; 

Far more to me, and thought in awe expressed, 
It is that stellar ether's lone expanse 

Whereof the mighty man of science dreams, 
Wherein the suns and planets swim, light gleams, 
And all those myriad throbbing waves advance, 
Of Becquerel, Hertz, Roentgen, and the rest. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, May 12, 1912. 
192 



CVI. 
HENRIETTA RENAN. 

La paix divine du devoir accompli. 

— Eschatologie : Louis MSnard. 

A woman unto whom no childhood came, 
Nor motherhood to still an aching heart, 
She dwelt from all she loved long years apart, 

Eating the rich man's bitter bread with shame, 

To save a home, and make a brother's name. 
Long hours of lofty study left her grave, 
And loneliness and love did make her brave, 

But God alone could give the spirit flame! 

A saint not on the Roman calendar 

She hath her crown from all who have not lost 
The primal Christian sense, in many waned, 
That duty bravely done, whate'er the cost, 
Is deepest miracle of Time by far 

And noblest height man's spirit hath attained. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Saturday evening, July 13, 191 2. 
193 



CVII. 
THE NILE 



// flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands, 
Like some grave mighty thought, threading a dream. 
—Leigh Hunt.* 



Lonely and far, the sunset's waning flame 

Burns o'er the Libyan waste; the clear night grows; 
In vast and eddying curves the brown Nile flows 

Through all the sand-strown wreck of Egypt's fame. 

Past p3'ramids and pillaged tombs, our shame, 
From iBthiop's heart to shores the Mid-sea knows, 
Sweeping, star-flecked and still, dim Nilus goes, 

And so hath gone since Horus bore his name. 

On Earth the good, in Heaven the judge of all, 
No more Osiris reigns ; no more Ra gleams ; 
Dark Set and gentle Nephthys live no more; 

Nor yet at Abydos doth Isis call; 
But still the river murmurs through our dreams 
Of Egypt old and gods who loved this shore! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

July 20-23, 1912. 

♦Hunt's sonnet on the Nile was one of her favorites. We read it often, 
usually along with Shelley's Ozymandias. 

194 



CVIII. 

YGDRASIL. 

Strange tree, drawing sweet life from thine own dead ! 

Three-fold thy roots mole Ymir's ancient earth ; 
World-wide, four-square, thy thick-set branches spread ; 

Chaos and deep night consorted at thy birth ! 

Dipped from the mystic font of Odin's love, 
The life in thee, passed on, can never die ! 

Dead, dead below, but growing ever above, 

Thy towering crown shall some day pierce the sky! 

Mightily from of old Balder and Thor 

Welcomed thee! Freya and the Norn-maids fair! 
Joyously, thy crowded leaves push evermore, 

Drinking amain their Heaven of light and air : 

Most unregarded fall, but now and then 
Is born one for the healing of all men. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Evening, August 9, 1912. 
195 



CIX. 

THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS. 

'Tis come! For Heitndal's horn rings far and near, 
The Fenris-wolf, broke loose, goes ravening, 
The Midgard serpent plots a gruesome thing, 

Frost-giants fell, with Loki's brood, appear, 

And hearts of men and gods are filled with fear. 
Foredoomed, not Odin's will, Thor's hammer swing, 
Can thwart the chill of Hela's winnowing. 

The sun is dim, the world's long night is here! 

Norse Ragnarok ! Dread eon void of light ! 
In dimmest past, and dimmest time to come, 
Thou hast thy place! Midway, we have our birth 
To hold and rule a most mysterious earth, 
But short our time: Arouse then, be not dumb, 
Gird on, fare forth, nor dread the one last fight ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, August 11, 19 12. 
196 



ex. 
PAESTUM. 
(To H. N.) 

I see it all once more: clouds, wind, sunbeams! 

A summer day, joyous, idyllic, kind! 

And flung like crimson gonfalons to wind, 
Across the sward, her poppies haunt my dreams. 
Below, the green and blue Tyrrhenian gleams; 

Above, her temples stand, strong yet to bind 

The soul to noblest types of Grecian mind, 
In whom creative power found god-like themes. 

What silence to the columned grandeur clings! 
What hope and fear, too big for words to tell ! 
What multitudes implored Poseidon here, 
And passed, long since, to Acheron's dim cheer ! 
Crows flap and call where gods were asked to dwell, 
And all is eloquent of vanished things ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

August 15, 16, 18, 1912. 

197 



CXI. 
AN AUGUST NIGHT (II). 

How calm this night, whose perfumes drift afar! 

A heaven of fleecy clouds, a bright full moon, 
With here and there a pallid blinking star, 

Make one forget the sticky, torrid noon. 

The grass and weeds inhale the mild still air ; 

The dark-crowned maples long black shadows cast ; 
With folded leaves the locusts cease from prayer ; 

And all things find a dim sweet ease at last. 

The open fields are full of quiet love; 

A thousand crickets chirp unto their own 
Their resonant love tones; the tender dove 

Of peace broods now: O why am I alone? 

Below, the city lies, a book of Fate, 
Where many leaves unfold, or soon or late. 



Washington, D. C, 

Sunday evening, August 25, 1912, 

Hill top between 15th and 16th Streets, overlooking the city. 

198 



CXII. 

SELF-RENUNCIATION. 

As torrent swift to me those last hours sped 
(My life compressed into a moment's thrill 
By some bad dream, subversive of the will), 

But endlessly for her their slow way led 

Through utter weariness to Lethe's bed; 
And I, in bitter grief, would keep her still 
Or bear her pain, so might it be His will : 

"Do not grieve for me, but do your work!" she said. 

And now that she is gone, this gentle one, 

Her words come back to me like prayers that bless, 
Fragrant with that divine forgetfulness 

Of large sweet souls, who make this world a heaven 
Of peace and love, a paradise begun, 

Leav'ning all souls with this their holy leaven. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Finished September 3, 19 12. 
199 



CXIII. 
PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD. 

At night and morn my golden beads are told : 
Children who danced brief space in April's sun, 
Maidens whose morn of May had scarce begun, 

Strong men and women loved as men love gold, 

And faces calm of those who died when old. 
Each bead is shining group of lives foredone, 
And lovingly I linger o'er each one : 

Yea, my rosary hath longings manifold ! 

I know not if my prayers by Him are heard, 
Yet still I bare my head and pour my wine. 

One thing I know, that I through spoken word 
Am lifted up toward Him, the All Divine, 

In passionate accord and, spirit stirred, 
Do hold communion with His saints and mine ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

September 4, 191 2. 



CXIV. 

THE EPIC MUSE. 

The winged rumors of vast deeds are rife: 

Now shall we hear war-cries and trumpets blown, 
Where old blind Homer makes Achilles known, 

And him that loved Andromache, true wife ; 

Where Milton sets the hosts of heaven at strife, 
Hurls Satan headlong flaming to his own; 
Or the Tuscan grim heaps scorn on popes who groan 

In Malebolge's deep their fire-stressed life. 

These are her woes, her teeth of dragons sown, 
That spring up armed men to mortal strife : 
But purer, more triumphant notes are rife 
From chorused voices and from trumpets blown, 
Where Dante's dream unfolds, circling God's throne, 
The great white rose of His Eternal Life! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

vSeptember 6, 1912. 



cxv. 
MOTHERHOOD. 

(On seeing a young mother kiss her baby on the back of its neck.) 

O rosebud fair! Unfolding tender one, 
In whom is lodged infinitude of grace, 
Thy mother's heart is awed before thy face, 

As one who sees a miracle begun. 

O child divine! My own and his dear son! 
Thy groping innocence our hearts embrace, 
And each, than other, seems the dearer place 

For kisses showered once more, no sooner done. 

And thou dost ever nearer, dearer grow, 
Reaching thy baby hands to my full breast 

With that sweet mother-trust God giveth thee! 
Thy comforter am I, thy heaven of rest; 
And thou art unto me Shekinah's glow, 

The Holy of Holies, where He speaks to me ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

September 11, 191 2. 



CXVI. 

RACE HATRED. 

And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother ? And he said, 
I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? And He said, What hast thou 
done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. 

Genesis IV, 9, 10. 

Sear, crisping flesh of our black brother man, 
Writhing within the hell of torturing flame — 
Kindled, O lust! in purity's dear name 

By men of baser sort, more lewd than Pan — 

The smoke and groaning of thy torments rise 
As from those awful pits the Tuscan saw ! 
Is there on earth no righteousness, no law? 

No venging God above to hear these cries? 

Are we then devils who, before our time, 

Must maim and burn to show whose sons we are? 
God's image in the ebon flesh must mar, 

Atoning crimes unproved, through baser crime? 

Great God, while such things are a Nation's shame, 
No right it has to name Thy holy name! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, September 15, 191 2. 
203 



CXVII. 

OLD LETTERS. 

Turning these faded leaves, so doubly dead, 
What voices speak to me across the years! 

What morning hopes, that with the morning fled ! 
What faces smile! What eyes are wet with tears! 

For some who wrote were fair, and some were strong, 
And some were wise, and many light of heart, 

And all to me so closely knit and long, 

My heart's blood chilled when they from Life did part. 

O poignant memories ! O days long sped ! 

My heart beats slow, with their dull freight of pain ! 
Yea, I am sick and weary with my dead, 

As one alone who hears November rain ! 

Oblivion, come to me with healing wings : 
That I may live henceforth in van ward things ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

September 21, 191 2. 

204 



CXVIII. 

SEA GARDENS. 

(The Bahamas, March, 1904.) 

Beneath the azure wave our fronds are spread ; 

We love the dimly lighted cool salt deeps; 
Purple and brown, and gold and green and red, 

Our banners drift where clean the strong tide sweeps. 

Bright multi-colored fishes round us swim, 
And tawny madrepores grow 'neath our shade, 

While closer veiled, in rift and cavern dim, 

Strange, slimy, crawling things their foes evade. 

Where deep and clear the tidal waters run, 

The bright light filters down, pale gold, sea-green, 

Transmuting all, with tender touch of sun, 
In this dim under-world, to fairy sheen. 

'Tis like some magic realm within a dream, 
So still our world, so fair, so faint its gleam ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 
October 29, 191 2. 



205 



CXIX. 

THE HEMLOCKS OF MY BOYHOOD 

Huge trunks that twice a hundred summers knew, 
On soil o'er-carpeted with needles brown — 
How solemn 't was beneath their dark green crown, 

Where ghostly pale the sunlight filtered through, 

Where scarce a tiny weed or grass-blade grew, 
And summer rain-drops seldom pattered down ! 
Yet there in glee we built a mimic town 

Whose play-house ways were palace walks perdue ! 

Gone now ! Waste pasture lands where once they stood, 
And gone the men who owned that solemn wood, 
The merry playmates, too, of that far day ! 

Decayed, forlorn, the country village stands, 
But the stream I loved still winds its meadowy way, 
And now, as then, crows call o'er autumn lands. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

October 30, 1912. 
206 



cxx. 
THE SHINING ONES. 

Gentle my lady was, and ever dwelt 

Serene in some fair heaven of love and peace, 
Whereto she drew a lonely one who felt, 

Within her pale, dull sorrow's pain surcease. 

Now shall he never see again her face, 

Nor hear the low sweet music of her voice : 

So many shining ones in that high place, 

So many things to do, so vast heaven's choice ! 

Ah me, so far will she have passed his ken 
That he may ne'er o'ertake his lady's train 

Of seraphim, and heaven-born maids and men : 
To hope to reach their lordly height — vain, vain ! 

Enough, if he might see her joy afar ! 

Serving in lowliest place where the heavenly are. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

October 30, 191 2. 

207 



CXXI. 

CHOPIN. 

On his divine whirlwind of melody 

Caught up and borne away, we float — a dream 
Within a dream — in purest phantasy, 

Where mortal life becomes an empty theme. 

Absorbed in this divine world-ecstasy 

Of flowing sound, hearts beat, eyes glow, stars gleam, 
And moved to tender chords eternally, 

Our lives become one with the cosmic stream. 

Anon, the cloying sweetness palls the sense, 

And banished then are we from that estate 
Where music is both God and Providence. 

Large loom the black and bitter things of fate, 
Since man knows naught of whither or of whence, 
And is for God or cosmic force no mate ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

October 31, 1912. 

208 



CXXII. 

THE PALACE OF TEARS 

I built within my soul a palace-tomb, 

A solemn, spacious, lordly place for tears, 
Wherein to dwell with grief through lonely years 

Whose footfalls sound the ashen way to doom. 

Its stately corridors and chambered room 

Should speak but of the dear and vanished years; 
Here mourn thy dead, and pour thrice bitter tears, 

Here heal thy hurt, or dwell alone in gloom. 

But joyously within its garden ways 

For my soid's sake, anon, a dear bird sung — 

Sung peace and hope and sunlit summer days, 
Till through the palace dim the clear notes rung. 

And then I knew that Love is life and song, 
And selfish grief a cruel, sterile wrong. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

November i, 1912. 

209 



CXXIII. 

APRIL AT WOODS HOLE. 

The call of spring is in the balmy air! 

About the island shores, from April's throne, 

The first divine arbutus' scent is blown; 
The sea is like a burnished mirror rare 
Whereon white fleecy clouds throw shadows fair; 

With winter birds the winter days have flown ; 

The swelling buds their tender green have shown ; 
And orioles in sunny orchards pair. 

What is it stirs in me this ecstasy, 
At hum of vagrant bee, at call of crow, 
At touch of all the spicy winds that blow? 

The earth is like a mother's breast to me, 

I hear her cradle song, her litany, 

And warm in sun I ask no more to know ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

November 2, 191 2. 



CXXIV 

ROBERT BROWNING. 

(The Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.) 

Thy mortal part Westminster gray entombs, 
But I do think thy spirit moves along 
The Arno stream with Cimabue's throng; 

With Titian haunts Venetian palace rooms ; 

Or dwells with Shelley 'neath the cypress glooms 
Where nightingales pour forth their heavenly song : 
With these, and Angelo, dost thou belong, 

So loved thou art, so large thy spirit looms ! 

A mighty past lives in thy verse with power 

To stir the deeper chords of human life! 
Yea, Master mine, 'tis some vast Gothic tower, 
Where Guido, Lippi, Sarto, Pippa chime, 
With Roland, One Word More and James Lee's Wife, 
Their golden bells, to mark the flight of time! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

November 2, 191 2. 



cxxv. 
RICHARD WAGNER'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 

Wagner, of trumpet-sounding, world-wide fame, 
The Norns of Time and Fate, those sisters gray, 
Whose spoken word the gods do not gainsay, 

Did with thy genius blend a fatal flame, 

That should consume the glory of thy name, 

.Should make thee wife and friend alike betray — 
Coarse pessimist to love and hope alway — 

And flicker round thy brow, a light of shame. 

Thy Lohengrin touched heights few souls attain, 
Brunhilde too : but thine Tannhauser's stain 

In many a Venusberg of low desire. 
Minna alone stands forth, the sorely tried, 

From selfish, sordid pages, fit for fire, 
The faithful one, by the faithless master's side. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

November 3, 191 2. 



CXXVI. 
A VASE OF OPAL GLASS. 

Harmonious the curves thy contour shows, 

Whose perfect form the master Greeks did love ! 
Outward, thy color shames the burnished dove, 

A bronzed, purple-green: old Neptune's rose; 

Within, the heart of Ancient Egypt glows, 
A heaven of purest blue, most liquid bright — 
A peacock-blue, which glows like magic light 

On Indian seas, where broad the Gulf-stream flows. 

Of Eblis and the East no doubt thou art, 
Since whoso looks into thy glowing core 
Is slave unto thy beauty evermore ; 

And bathed within its mystic sapphire light, 
Forgets his lonely world, would sell birth-right, 
And only feels the glow that warms his heart. 



At 1474 Belmont Street. 

November 20, 191 2. 
213 



CXXVII. 
BEYOND POSILIPO. 

From Posilipo stretch Phlegraean fields 

And curved shores where Roman galleys lay, 
Blue seas o'er which Cumaean Greeks held sway, 

And islands where the vine its warm heart yields ! 

O land of dreams ! I see the Legion shields 
Round Nero thrown; speak Seneca good day; 
Hear Marcus Brutus plot the night away; 

Saint Paul plead Christ in Pozzuolan fields ! 

Scarce one stone left to tell of Cumae's sway; 

Dead, Maro's tongue; dispersed, Misenum's fleet; 
O'er Nero's palace Baian waters play; 

But still Avernus lisps what Virgil told; 
And Nisida is fair, as when of old 
Her gardens thrilled at touch of Portia's feet. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

November 23, 1912. 

214 



CXXVIII. 

FIELDS AND WOODS. 

Olympus is but the outside of the earth everywhere 
— Thoreau. 

Sky-blue the gentians gleam this sunny day. 

On the meadow-bank by the wood, where stray my feet ; 

And from their dim-lit, whispering retreat, 
The gray oaks east afield their rippling spray 
On long straight arms to greet the autumn ray, 

And make of light and shade the background meet 

For picture painted by the moment fleet, 
Where fringed banners pave a sapphire way. 

Be it the sun's confiding, tender ray, 
Or but the wind-kissed gentians' airy sway, 
Of this-day-morn I am no more the clod; 

Life thrills and trills, the red blood sweeps along; 
I run, I shout, I am become a god; 
And Nature sings for me the eternal song! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

November 30 and December 1, 1912. 
215 



CXXIX. 

FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON. 

(1816-1853.) 

The fragrant memory of saintliness 
Still clings about thy once beloved name, 
Dear Robertson, of Brighton-chapel fame : 

A saintliness that is both more and less 

Than customary canon-saints confess — 

More, that it deeper burned with whiter flame, 
Less, that it feebler clung to dogmas lame, 

Seeking the Spirit pure all creeds address. 

Strong soul, the saint shone clear, both in thy word 
And in thy life for men outpoured, yea, more, 

Thy love irradiating places dim 
Seemed his who taught in Galilee of yore, 
And whoso read thy stirring words, or heard, 

Was straightway moved to follow thee, and him. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 1, 191 2. 

216 



cxxx. 
REMINISCENCE. 

(Eduard Remenyi, 1830-1887.) 

The warmth, the perfume faint, the lights turned low, 
The tense white faces lifted, row on row, 
The quiet room, the master's face aglow, 
Drive out the wailing elves of wind and snow; 

But when, superb, he lifts the magic bow, 
And wave on wave his soul begins to flow 
In swift and stormy runes, or pleadings low, 
From those thrilled finger-tips to souls that grow ; 

Or when, in revery, his features show 
The dreamy god, whose sacred joy and woe 
On thrilling strings outpoured, tender and slow, 
As brother gods immortally we know : 

Then, O then, Olympian faces glow, 

And worlds unseen the gracious gods bestow ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 17, 191 2. 
217 



CXXXI. 

DE IMITATIONE CHRISTI. 

Thomas of Kempen, saint in high degree, 
That I do love thy book, here I confess, 
Gentle teacher and preacher of righteousness, 

By love untold from bonds of self set free. 

Thy mystic spirit draweth men to thee; 

The pure white flame of thy God-towardness; 
The inborn gentleness thy words express; 

And last, O jeweled crown, thine honesty! 

Yet am I truly thankful that I read 
Thy golden book of longings and of prayers, 
Untrammeled of the mediaeval mind. 
Let me the strong sweet life of Nature find — 
The God of earth and heaven whom Science bares- 
And whoso will may have your church and creed! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 26, 191 2. 
218 



CXXXII. 

THE APENNINES. 

(May 1 8, 1906.) 

Fair chestnut woods and nestling villages, 

With many an old stone church and wayside shrine, 
And many an olive grove, and many a vine, 

Adorn the slopes we climb in curving stages. 

Here loud a zigzag dark-green torrent rages ; 
And in a heaven of blue, white with sunshine, 
Uncertain drift above the summit-line 

The lazy clouds whose shadows blot the villages. 

Italy! Arcadian charms are thine! 
And all the joy of all thy sons is mine 
To-day, as I wend o'er these mighty hills, 

With one who knows the story of thy past, 
Bathed in the glory that thy landscape fills, 
And that diviner glow the dead years cast. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 28, 1912. 

219 



CXXXIII. 

FOG ON SHORE. 

(Woods Hole.) 

Hillside and valley, island, sea, and shore, 
With misty clinging robes, for three full days, 
The fog has swathed — those soft and lovely grays 

Whose monotones unchanged become a bore. 

Its dank form drifting, creeping, evermore, 
Past blotted ships at anchor in the bays, 
Through dripping village street and forest ways, 

Has filled our souls till they are gray and sore. 

But lo! the sun breaks on the sea and land, 
And swift the scattered hosts of fog disband, 

As Earth with glint of blue and gold is thrilled. 

So be it with our hearts that grief has chilled, 
Let hope eternal drive the mists away, 
And be the sunrise of a nobler day ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 30, 31, 1912. 
220 



CXXXIV. 

FOG AT SEA (I). 

A double watch is set, the ship is slowed, 
And warning bells clang o'er the misty deep 
Most damnably, hours long, disturbing sleep, 

That all who sail may know where we are stowed. 

But from the silent ones, so near at morn, 

Which now, fog-wrapped, like grisly phantoms loom, 
Reaching in stealth their icy hands to doom 

The beat of our warm hearts — O, who shall warn? 

The fog above, the gurgling waters round, 

I seem to hear their crunching blades like steel 
Grind through our good ship's body, bow and keel, 

Which bubbling sinks within the vast profound. 

Nay now, the sunrise lights the sea afar, 
And dim on horizon, the icebergs are! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 31, 1912. 



cxxxv. 
MYSTIC AND HALF-MYSTIC. 

That flowing back to Being's primal store, 
With loss of self, for which the mystics long, 
Would nothing add to God — no joy — no song — 

Some small accretions of Himself — no more; 

But if to Him were joined, as sea to shore, 
Our human qualities in loving throng, 
They would increase His joy and make it strong— 

If like his creatures He doth con love o'er. 

And since He must be like His universe — 

Because things made reflect the maker's mind — 
And most of all like man, at least not worse, 
I think that we shall live again in Him, 
And nobler and diviner then shall find 

Clear light from Him to read what now is dim. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 31, 1912. 



CXXXVI. 

THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 

The prescient God, let him maintain who can ! 

The rocks are full of types sketched out, reviewed, 

Found wanting, cast away, or slowly trued 
To perfect forms. Ceaseless, God's winnow-fan 
Sorts better still from best, as ages span : 

Last prototype, and like the others rude, 

His neolithic man, hairy and nude, 
Who slowly now becomes the perfect man.* 

From dawn of life in paleozoic age 

This swarming earth has been a trial field 
Wherein a virile God has sown in haste 
A horde of struggling forms, hoping as yield 
To reach some consummating perfect stage — 
Elusive ever and evermore erased. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 2, 1913. 



*How slowly, and through what unutterable woe, let Europe answer! 
May, 1915. 

223 



CXXXVII. 

COMPANIONSHIP. 

No thought on her, most unexpectedly, 

I met her on the street this Christmas day; 
She smiled on me the selfsame lovely way, 

Nor changed was she in aught that I could see; 

It seemed as in old days we should agree, 
Therefore, I said: "Ah God, how long away!" 
And gently, she: " It seemeth but a day, 

And yet I know 'tis long indeed to thee." 

And with her would I fain have spoken more — 
Of whatsoever place she dwells in now, 
But with the longing words: "When comest thou?" 
She slipt away, and I beheld, as meet, 
Only the common faces on the street, 
But each did seem with bright light glinted o'er. 



At 1474 Belmont Street. 

December 25, 1912, and January 4, 1913. 
224 



CXXXVIII. 

WORDSWORTH. 

Spake Nature's God: "O son, in me abide; 

To know diviner good, forsake the throng." 

In this clear faith he sang his lyric song, 
And every stream, and wood and field replied. 
And such a glory floods his country-side — 

Inviolate and pure, methinks, his strong 

Sweet spirit moveth, musing still, along 
The Windermere, and Derwentwater wide. 

In peace and love he dwelt; with poet's pen 
Warring 'gainst all that made for human wrong: 

Hence shall his grave, sun-lit, grass-turfed, dew-kissed, 
Be place for pious pilgrimage, so long 
As kindred souls shall love their fellow men, 

And find in Letters what the creeds have missed. 



At 1474 Belmont .Street, 

January 5, 1913, and earlier. 

22c 



CXXXIX. 

GEORGE GISSING. 

(In memory of The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft.) 

Dear brother of the pen and of the heart, 
For meager bread toiling in London ways, 
Thou did'st deserve more comradeship and praise, 

More gold, than men did grant — a life apart 

From bitter want that stung thee like a dart 
And all life's petty needs in thronging maze, 
Where thou could'st give, unvexed, thy nights and days 

And thy whole soul devoutly to thine art. 

Set free, thy swan-song shows to what divine 

Clear wells of thought thou let'st thy buckets down, 
But all too late the meed of praise is thine — 
The cold dead brow receives the victor's crown. 
Yet could'st thou come again we should know how, 
Sad one, to laurel-crown thy living brow. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 6, 1913. 



226 



CXL. 
THE WESTERN ALPS FROM VARESE 

(September 7, 1906.) 

Strolling alone, heart-siek, the old fir-wood, 

Where-in Varese takes her holiday, 
And from dark hill-crest looking far away 

Across the fertile plain of Lombardy, 
Dotted with lakes and little villages, 

And olive-green with harvests yet to be, 
The sealed heavens opened suddenly — 

As unto him who saw from God let down 
The New Jerusalem to dwell with men — 

And I beheld full fifty miles away, 
In range on range uplifted gloriously, 

The sunlit splendor of the snowy Alps 
Whose valleys, filled with steely glaciers, shone, 

And in remotest majesty, Mont Blanc. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 7, 1913. 
227 



cxu. 
WINTER DAYS. 

Gray, melancholy tones perfuse the air; 

Mists veil the sun; the snow hides all below; 

The birds have flown; concealed, the rivers go; 
Midwinter gales the last brown oak leaves tear 
From their frail moorings. Cold is everywhere; 

Insistent, searching, chill, it fain would know 

The heart of man and still for aye the flow 
Of that warm stream within its secret lair. 

One part of earth alone is kindly warm — 
That nestled in the silent dark, below; 

There hushed from all the beatings of the storm 
Her still life waits the summer's quickening glow: 

Communing low, how yearn those roots of things 

For sun and shower and bee, warm April brings ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 9, 1913. 

228 



CXLII. 
FIRST LOVE. 

(To Pierre Lenoir.) 

What gives thy pictured bronze supremest worth 
Is youth and love, in whom the mystery 
And dateless melancholy of the sea 

Have hushed the shallow-rippling note of mirth. 

Twinned in the tender heaven of Love's new birth, 
With thoughts intent on deathless years to be, 
These lovers on the shore sense not the sea 

They gaze upon in dream,, nor sky, nor earth. 

Sad poet's heart is thine, Pierre Lenoir, 
To set, as counterpoint of human soul, 

The fickle beatings of the yeasty main ; 
Yet is that heart a deep whose billows roll 

On barren shores — where Love is not, or vain ; 
But deeps respond, when Love is guiding star. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, January 12, 191 3. 
229 



CXLIII. 
S U R "L* INTIME"DEPIERRELENOIR 

C'est amour printanier en plus doux ciel de foi, 
Que votre bronze beau brode, traduit, explique 
Par le mer ten£breux, peu sur, melancolique, 

Qu'impose un grand, tendre silence a leur folle joie. 

Ces amants transported, par la plus haute loi, 
lis revent ans joyeux, marchant a. la musique; 
lis n'entendent jamais ce qui le mer replique — 

Pour eux, en songe, entonne et finit tout en soi. 

Un poet sombre est ton coeur, Pierre Lenoir, 
Qui fait de l'oc^an, vaste, ecumeux, sauvage, 
Symbole surgissant, du libre esprit volage; 
Pourtant en coeur humain, par amour neglige, 
S'eleve un mer profond, sterile et desole; 
Mais beau ce mer a. ceux que l'amour donne a boir ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 14, 1913. 
230 



CXLIV. 
PERSEPHONE. 

(Suggested by Rembrandt's picture in the National Gallery in 

London.) 

How vividly the picture lives in me! 

The white-robed clinging forms; the sunlit plain; 

The god, the maid, the tiger-harnessed wain; 
And that dark gulf down which they plunge so swiftly. 
From Dis the dark god's grasp to set thee free 

The wailing maids of Enna seek in vain; 

Too late, too weak, fair daughter of the plain, 
Those maids, who never more shall follow thee ! 

The fanes of Sicily are broken stone; 
And alien races dwell on Enna's plain 

Who worship other gods than Hellas owned; 
Yet still the magic dreams of Greece remain 
To us, as to the poet-painter lone, 

Clear voices of the past, chanting full-toned. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 16, 1913. 
231 



CXLV. 
IDEALS. 

Just God ! I would not that my life should be 
One long succession of unmeaning days — 
Each ennuye" and banal, many ways, 

Each one gaunt bond-slave driv'n, and all unlovely; 

But each should flash from many-sided me 
Some love, some truth, some hope, of ruddy blaze, 
To drive before its face life's somber haze, 

As rising sun whom all the night-mists flee; 

Yea, Lord, give me but lowliest work to do, 
So it be Thine and mine, and all divine 

Of love concord, with clear light flashing through, 
And I shall be complete, as yon tall pine, 

Or this clear lake wherein 'tis mirrored true, 
A part of earth whose will is wholly Thine ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 19, 19 13. 
232 



CXLVI. 
ON THE KAHLENBERG. 

Beethoven's star, Beethoven's genius lone, 
His kindly heart, his harmonies divine, 
His lofty words, his Nature-love are mine, 

As through my soul his music makes its moan, 

Swift moving, endless drifting, tone on tone, 
Where listening to the murmurs of the pine,* 
On this vast hill, in floods of warm sunshine, 

Lonely, I tread his ways, a soul storm-blown. 

And here the haunting nightingale was heard 
By him of old in awe, as now by me, 

Warbling his high notes clear, where heaven appears; 
And the voice of the bird wings swift across the years 
To the master's self, whose kindling face I see, 
As his soul responds, deep-moved by the wondrous bird. 



Sestet, May 24, 1912. 

Octave, February 22, 1913. 



*This pine wood, which was probably planted since Beethoven's day, is 
on a steep hillside overlooking his brook. Most of the forest covering the 
top of the Kahlenberg is beech and oak. Below are vineyards and villages 
and the blue Danube, and farther away the domes and spires of Vienna. 

233 



CXLVII. 
THE SONNETS OF HEREDIA.* 

Heredia, Cuban born, Parisian bred, 

Painter of the great past, with skill to seize 
The high reliefs, and power to hold and please 

Our fancy more than all thy fellows dead; 

Proud that hot land should be that gave thee birth, 
And that which welcomed thee as foster-mother ; 
Prance cannot show of poets crowned another, 

Among her many great, of nobler worth! 

Here Egypt lives, old Greece and pagan Rome, 
Barbarian times, the Renaissance star-bright; 
Each shining in its own immortal light, 

Each speaking unto us its own words home, 

And over all the melancholy gleam 

Of light from dying sun and shattered dream. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

February 22, 1913. 



These may now be had complete in three English translations: 
Taylor (rhymed), San Francisco: William Doxey, 1897; Sewall (blank 
verse), Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1900; Johnson (blank verse), 
Brunswick, Maine: Chandler & Son, 1910. 

234 



CXLVIII. 
THE WIND-HARP. 

What prisoned spirit stirs these wailing strings, 
Till my sad heart no more endures the tone ? 

It seems the woe of elemental things, 

Blent with all human woe, that here makes moan : 

Of hammer-beats on steel, the clang and groan ; 

The shriek of hungry atoms loosed and bound; 
Mad wash of seas on continents o'er thrown; 

The ceaseless ebb and flow of lost and found; 

Dead loves; and longings fierce, unsatisfied; 

All heartache, failure, pain, remorse and crime; 
The wail of hunger; cries for life, denied; 

All sorrowful deep mysteries of time ! 

Spirit of disillusion, cease! Be gone! 

For I would hear the higher gods chant on ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

February 27, 1913. 

235 



CXLIX. 

THE SLEEP OF PLANTS. 

(To G. J. P.) 

When turns the sky at morn from gray to gold, 
Making a heavenly path for his great car, 

Unto our Lord, the Sun, our leaves unfold, 
And all in trembling eagerness we are. 

Day-long we praise him with our leaves at strain, 
Lest any look of his bright face be lost, 

In joy so tense almost it thrills like pain, 
Yet must we follow him, be pain love's cost. 

At flood of even-tide our prayers are done, 
The coming night a dewy quiet brings, 

And all our leaves relax with setting sun 
To that dim sleep of fragrant voiceless things. 

Sleep, sleep ! A perfume faint on wood and sward, 
A whispered lull, till comes again our Lord. 



At 1474 Belmont Street. 

March, 9, 1913. 

236 



CI. 
THE VEGETARIAN. 

Ofttimes at thought of all the innocent 

Whose blood is shed that men may eat and live, 
My heart is sick within me and doth give, 

Of my some share, a shamed acknowledgment. 

At bleatings of these mangled, helpless ones, 
Which I must hear far-off, but very plain, 
I'd fain live all my days on roots and grain, 

To ease their pain, and check the blow that stuns. 

But not enough of roots and fruits are there, 
And these are also full of life — not dead! 
How then shall men who swarm the earth be fed? 

Were it not better not to have life's care? 

Buddha ! Compassionate and tender guide ! 
To-day, how are men's frailties multiplied! 



At 1474 Belmont Street. 

March 19, 1913, 

237 



THE DARWINIAN. 

The joys of life are many, brief the pain; 

Here age and slow disease play not the thief; 

And if we count the joy, albeit brief, 
Of all the millions bred for food and gain 
Which else had never been at all, 't is plain 

The credit-side of this red ledger-leaf 

Belongs to man, who hath no cause for grief, 
Since joy o'erwhelms the pain, nor leaves soul stain. 

But neither man nor beast implicit fares 

At Nature's hands. With them she strows her way- 
Only the type is precious in her eyes. 
In our brief time we find what joy we may 
And pass it on. The race is all; nor cares 

Earth much for race, type follows type — and dies I 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

March 25, 1913. 
238 



CUI. 

APRIL IN THE NORTH. 
(To R. h. T.) 

Robins and blue-birds sing of winter done; 

In field and wood an impulse strong has stirred ; 
The swelling maples redden in the sun; 

In every pool the piping frogs are heard. 

The sun is bright, but chilly winds still blow ; 

The grackles call, the crows respond full harsh; 
By every stream the pussy-willows grow; 

The cowslip's cup of gold redeems the marsh. 

The boy's heart thrills — what though his feet are wet, 
His hands are full of all the wealth of spring: 

Pale anemone, blue rathe violet 
And harbinger-of-spring, bright lowly thing. 

Happy the man who keeps the boy's heart still, 
And he whom piping frogs can change at will ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

March 25, 1913. 
239 



cun. 
MY MOTHER'S GARDEN. 

There lilies opened white and creamy wells; 

There daffodil and tulip flaunted gold; 

Rathe primrose, crocus, hyacinth, made bold; 
There larkspurs grew with Canterbury bells, 
Dark peonies where no sweet odor dwells, 

Snow-ball, mock-orange, iris yellow-stoled, 

June-rose, tall hollyhock, pinks manifold, 
With half a hundred more fond memory tells. 

And there the boy each spring and summer saw 

The lithe shoots push from beds of warm brown earth, 
Then leaf and flower appear, by some fixed law; 
And wondered o'er it all, as seasons rolled — 
The yearly miracle, the strange new birth — 
And wonders yet the more, now he is old. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, April 6, 1913. 
240 



CLIV. 
GRAVES NEAR BALTIMORE. 

A hundred thousand graves on these bare slopes 
Have often called to mind our nothingness, 
Life's shattered dream, its futile mad caress, 

Fierce strivings, vain regrets, and vainer hopes. 

Nor swifter 'neath the sod the black mole gropes 
Than doth my fancy where these bodies lie : 
Forlorn, skulls fallen in, long bones awry, 

Dank matted hair — what speaketh here of hopes? 

Yet sweet to mingle with the roots of things, 
And slowly draw again to light and air, 

In grass and herb and tree, in bud and flower, 

And all the myriad storm of beating wings 
That hum and buzz and gleam, in vision fair, 
Before the face of God, the appointed hour. 



On train, 

April 8, 1913. 



241 



CLV. 
THE AVON. 

What memories are thine, O Avon stream, 

Of him who crowned Elizabethan time 

And made all men subservient to his rhyme, 
Supreme in power where others did but seem. 
Mystic for us thy placid waters gleam ; 

Magic thy willowed banks where in his prime, 

The tragic lord of every age and clime, 
Now Hamlet, Lear, he moved within a dream! 

His dust is here beside the peaceful stream, 
But his great spirit lives from age to age, 

And moves all men who speak our English tongue, 
And love heroic deeds on tragic stage, 

As naught can move us else, or said or sung, 
Since he has caught the whole of life's fair dream ! 



New York, 

April 14, 1913. 



242 



CLVI. 
EVANGELINE. 

{To William Couper.) 

Ideal beauty lives for him alone 

Whose eyes have felt Minerva's touch divine : 

So Keats, so Shelley loved the Muses nine ; 
So, sculptor, thou hast heard the trumpets blown, 
And all the world-old glorious masters known ; 

Heaven-touched hast seen a light more bright than day 

On old immortal marbles nickering play 
Till thou hast made their mastery thine own. 

Thy marble fair her purity doth tell 
Who pensive waits in vain her Gabriel. 
From poet's tender page, moving to tears, 

"O my beloved!" sounds her mournful cry, 
Far off and faint adown the gray old years; 
Yet here she lives again immortally. 



New York, 

April 17, 1913. 



243 



CLVII. 
TO GUTZON BORGLUM. 

The high gods grant not all our hearts desire, 
But unto each who nobly strives for power 
Some portion of themselves they give, to flower 

From day to day, as we climb high and higher. 

Were it not so, burnt with consuming fire 

The heart must die : but with the lordly dower 
Of noble beauty glimpsed in lofty hour, 

Heroically we strive, compel, aspire. 

So touched was he who from the marble's gloom 
Bade Milo's Venus live in beauty lone; 
And he who carved the winged Victory; 
Who wrought the Thinker on Lorenzo's tomb! 
Yea, what of sculptor's art can never die 
Are those immortal gods wrought in the stone ! 



New York, 

April 18, 1913. 



244 



CLVIII. 

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, 
******* 

soles occidere el redire possunt: 
nobis cum semel occiiit brevis lux, 
nox est perpelua una dormienda. 

— -Catullus. 

Sweet voice, and sad, across the gulf of years 

Proclaiming life's swift flight and love's sharp thorn ! 

O Veronese Catullus, noble born, 
On thy wild Lesbia whom no kiss endears 
Wasting thy wealth of love and youth and tears ! 

For her, the wanton one, the world's deep scorn; 

For thee the laurel crown to time's last morn, 
As poet-lover, sighing hopes and fears ! 

Thine old, fierce Roman years have gone their way 

To night and sleep, with rise and set of suns, 
And brief as thine is our fast fleeting day; 

Yet hope, and peace, and joy have come again 
To dwell among the stalwart sons of men 
Forevermore, as he may read who runs. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

May 3, 1913. 

245 



cwx. 

JUNE. 

God dwells in growing things, as hope in the boy! 
The myriad magic forms that bud and bloom, 
That procreate and swarm this great earth-room, 

Are but the symbols of his mighty joy! 

I feel it e'er — my faith no pains destroy, 

No doubt on my fair dream casts aught of gloom, 
For world-attuned, I am as one to whom 

A lordly symphony brings purest joy! 

Therefore I sing! Yea, all my heart is glad 
In Him whose boundless joy in green is clad, 
Or rainbow-hued makes fair the summer world. 
Therefore, the heart leaps in me as of old 
It thrilled the boy, morn, noon, and evenfold, 
Who knelt before the banners May unfurled; 



On train, 

New York to Washington, 
June 2, 1913. 



246 



ClyX. 

DA VINCI. 

(Humanist, poet, musician, painter, sculptor, anatomist, in- 
ventor, mathematician, architect, engineer.) 

Veramenle mirabile e celeste fit 
Lionardo figliuolo di ser Piero da Vinci. 

— Giorgio Vasari. 

O land, whose matchless painters all acclaim, 
Was ever greater, tenderer soul than he — 
The boy who set the captive wild birds free, 

And with his angel spoiled Verrocchio's fame; 

The youth to whom all god-like knowledge came, 
And all superb creative mastery; 
The noble man of matchless energy; 

The loving sage who bore a stainless name ! 

Leonard who left the Supper of the Lord, 
That marvel on the Milan cloister-wall, 
Unfinished dream, in ruin slow to fall, 
Because he could not make the Master's face 
With his divine fair thought of Him accord, 
Nor paint an all-compelling, perfect grace I 



Minneapolis, June 18, 1913. 

Washington, July 6, 19 13. 
247 



CLXI. 

SISTER JOSEPH. 

(The Mayo Clinic, St. Mary's Hospital, Rochester, Minn.) 

woman, strong of will and sure of deed, 

As I have seen thy blood-stained ringers move, 
Obedient to the surgeon's slightest need, 
And swift to clamp or stitch the quivering groove, 

Serene of soul as he who wields the knife, 

Unblanched by what would pale a sister's face, 

Intent alone to save imperiled life 

For love and service yet on earth a space — 

Have seen thy graciousness on all lay hold, 
And how to gentle mercy thou art wed, 

To thy firm soul, as unto him of old, 
The law of service being daily bread — 

1 said: St. Francis lives again in thee, 
Yearning to bless our frail humanity. 



Rochester, Minn., 

June 26, 1913. 



248 



CLXII. 
GRANT'S POINT, ORONOCO, MINN 

(To Dr. and Mrs. MacC.) 

It haunts me still — that sunset woodland where, 
Breath held, tiptoeing silently along, 

In fear to lose one note of that high air, 

We heard the thrushes' deep, contralto song; 

That cloudy evening sky, that mild June air, 
The wooded hills, the farms, the forest plain, 

The lonely lake where all were mirrored fair, 
And our deep joy of life akin to pain; 

But most of all, that barren limestone shore 
Where snowy larkspurs flung in bright array, 

Like fairy lancers moonbeam silvers o'er, 
Did storm up rugged banks a glorious way. 

O wedded love divine ! O friendship fair! 
I<et not the years thy deep pure joy impair! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

July 4, 1913. 

249 



CLXIII. 
MY CHURCH. 

I hate not pillared groin, or slender spire, 
Or stained windows' gorgeous blazonry; 
But smell of altar-smoke is not for me, 

Nor pomp of chanting priests in golden tire, 

Nor organ peal, nor sermon dry, or dire; 
For my cathedral arch is open sky, 
My choir, the woodland's echoing minstrelsy, 

And God's immense green earth my altar-fire ! 

Yet I do know all ways, eternally, 

So they are righteous ways, lead unto Him. 
I^ead they to church, to wood, to cloister dim, 

To lonely mountain range or far-off sea, 
To dark and humid mine or desert rim, 

They are His paths — and there His church must be ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

July 17, 1913. 



250 



CLXIV. 
JANE AND THOMAS. 

In Cheyne Garden-walk the children call, 
And gray old Thames crawls on her muddy knees 
And glints in wannish sun, stirred by the breeze, 

Where 'neath the elms in bronze he lives for all. 

In Cheyne Walk first leaves of autumn fall 
Round that sad, seated figure naught can please; 
The morning birds sing in his garden trees,* 

The ivy that she planted lines the wall. 

Within their sunny rooms, where Tennyson 
And Emerson and Froude were loving guests, 
Are letters, pictures, books — the precious rests 

Of forty years — from Fate by sheer toil won. 

But where are they who here matched love and strife? 
Here tasted all the bittersweet of life? 



London, 

August 20, 19 13. 



*An old pear tree and a mountain ash. 

251 



CLXV. 

TINTAGEL.* 

Soft drifting mists of the bold dark Cornish shore, 
Ghostly and gray o'er hill and vale they stream, 
The while I hear, wrapped in a tender dream, 

The mournful ocean at Tintagel's door; 

Reverberant from cavern roof and floor — 

Dun mottled walls where sun-rays never gleam — 
I hear, above the sea-gull's plaintive scream, 

The mighty ocean's muffled boom and roar. 

O land of myths and memories dear to me! 
'Tis Arthur's land of dreams; Isolde's home; 
Here came the wondrous child born from the foam ; 
Here Merlin heard the long sea-surges roll ; 
Here world-old mysteries of moaning sea 

Are blent with deepest woes of the human soul. 



Cornwall, 
August 31, 1913. 



* Pronounced Tin-ta'-jel. 

Note. — Since this sonnet was written I have found a paragraph by 
Thomas Hardy which chimes in very well with my feeling and admirably 
characterizes the lonely grandeur of the Cornish coast. "The place is pre- 
eminently (for one person at least) the region of dream and mystery. The 
ghostly birds, the pall-like sea, the frothy wind, the eternal soliloquy of 
the waters, the bloom of dark purple cast, that seems to exhale from the 
shoreward precipices, in themselves lend to the scene an atmosphere like 
the twilight of a night vision." — (Preface to "A Pair of Blue Eyes.") 

252 



CLXVI. 

RICHARD JEFFERIES. 

(On reading The Story of My Hearth) 

Peace, peace, O loving soul! Now art thou blent 
With all the light and beauty of that world 
Of suns and stars, and dreams on dreams unfurled, 

That was to thee thy soul's pure element. 

Beyond the sensuous sway of color, scent, 

Of line and form, thou sawest pure spirit climb 
The infinite degrees of space and time : 

Therefore, could death alone bring sweet content. 

Peace, peace ! As mist of dawn, there shalt thou find 
Thy deepest sorrow gone ; thy soul, aglow, 
The pitiful and tender God shalt know, 

Whose handiwork in mountain, sea and plain, 
Upon the dear, dim earth thou sought'st in vain : 
There grow the lofty, longed-for, larger mind! 



H6tel des Capucines, 

Paris, Sept. 26, 19 13. 

253 



CLXVII. 
BEETHOVEN (III). 

Immense, soul-filling harmonies are thine 

Thou god of quivering bow and sounding strings; 

Of trumpet tones; of singing winged things; 
Of silver, bronze and wood; all notes divine 
Of storm and stress, soul's purpose and repine; 

Of all the subtle melody that wings 

I/ike perfume faint round all fair woodland things ; 
And of the lofty soul, and eyes that shine. 

Thy firm-set lips seem e'er at strife with fate, 
God of the bulging brow and noble mind ; 
Master of all the harmonies divine! 
And lonely thou, missing an earthly mate, 
Ivonely and sad, but brave withal, and kind ; 
Lord of her tender soul and lord of mine! 



Paris-Antwerp, 

October 10-17, 1913. 

254 



CLXVIII. 
BAUDELAIRE. 

(Montparnasse.) 

Mephisto. — 

Thou see'st, 'tis as I told thee long ago, 

Now art thou dead and gone to that gray shade 
Where joy is not, and all hopes slowly fade ! 

Man's heaven? Behold it where thou liest low! 

I only live, I guide the Time-stream's flow! 
A book declares: Man's in God's image made, 
But all such gods are buried with the spade, 

Of that be sure — no more is there to know ! 

The poet — 

A little wiser grown since here I lie, 

I dream a time when all my flowers are dead 
And purer, brighter ones have come instead. 
But ever round me in the dark it clings— 
That nameless thing of smothered hovering wings ; 
And time creeps on, slow as eternity. 



Paris, 

October 14, 1913. 



255 



CLXIX. 
MOLIERE. 

In Pere L,achaise his ashes recreate 

Themselves each year in a fringe of garden flowers 
As though, heart-weary of the creeping hours, 

They fain would live again and mock at fate. 

Of old he claimed the sun for his estate 

Choosing, as wiser part, to hide 'neath showers 
Of merry jests and actor's mimic powers, 

His broken heart and loveless bitter fate. 

Now is he throned within our hearts as one 
On whom forever shines a genial sun : 

With Scapin, Sganarelle, Alceste, Don Juan, 

Mascarille knave, and many more who plot, 
The charming Gallic comedy is on, 

And Armande Bejart's follies are forgot. 



Paris, 

October 14, 1913. 



256 



CLXX. 
RICHARD WAGNER. 

Discordant ways his flaming soul was drawn : 

Rude Norse, he loved the wild Valhalla din ; 

With Percivale, the pure, found heaven within ; 
And was of Cyprian Venus willing pawn ; 
Saw mournful Elsa, clad in shimmering lawn, 

Take sad farewell of her loved Lohengrin; 

Knew all the hopeless woe of Tristam's sin; 
And heard Rhine-maidens singing in the dawn. 

Then poured his tortured soul in massive tones : 
Pure harmonies; divine orchestral groans; 
All discords swept across the poet's mind ; 
All cries of joy; all moans of utter pain; 
All loves, all hates, all fears; all longings vain; 
All lost and wandering cries, borne down the wind ! 



Vienna, 

October 29, 1913. 



257 



CLXXI. 

THE POET. 

I am a part of my lord Bacon's shame; 

I feel the dagger in Paolo's heart; 

With Prospero I muse, with Hamlet smart; 
With lumpish Caliban the gods I blame; 
I see the pentecostal tongues of flame; 

I jolt with joltings of the tumbrel-cart; 

With low-browed Judas I am set apart; 

With Jesus on the cross I name His name; 

i 

And far beyond the bounds of time and fate, 
A spirit pure, freed from the body's weight, 
Across the voids until I see His face, 
Through dim eternities, His ways I trace. 
Which world I love the best let him divine 
Who also knows a world of dreams like mine ! 



Vienna, 

November 6, 19 13. 



258 



CLXXII. 

IL CINQUECENTO. 

(Johannus Bellinus faciebat Anno MDXV.) 

Lady, I know not if thou hadst a soul 
That with thy body's beauty did compare, 
But this I know : thine image here is fair 

As hers who bore to Zeus the golden bowl ! 

Long dead, thou livest still, a radiant whole! 
Goddess, behold, how down thy golden hair 
And naked limbs and perfect body bare, 

The curving lines of glorious beauty roll ! 

So well old masters knew the way to fame, 
Linking their own with some fair woman's name; 
Knew how to save from wreck of drifting years 

The witching beauty of a woman's grace, 
From all the weltering flood of human tears 
The madonna glory of a heavenly face ! 



Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen, Vienna, 

November u, 1913. 

259 



CLXXIII. 
ALPENLANDER. 

Unten, ein grauer Nebel streift Thalgrund 
Ganz wie ein See; hoch oben schimmert klar 
Die Morgen-Sonne Herbsts auf Gipfeln starr 

Die leicht mit Schnee bekleidet ragen bunt; 

Dazwischen kommt der gahnend Felsenschlund; 
Da kommen Klippen grau, die Tannen-Schar, 
Schwarz' Fichten Reih'n, mit gelben I/archen bar; 

Auch schone griine Weid'n, der Hiigel rund. 

Traum-sanft ein Zauberwind weht iiber all; 

Die hohen Bergenlander lacheln weit; 
Sieht ganz wie Gotter wohnen Berg und Thai; 
Und mitten in des einsam Herzens Pein, 
Kommt stromend all des Gipf els Freiheit ein : 
Ein Himmels Ruf zur neuen Heiterkeit. 



Breitenstein, Oesterreichische Alpen, 
November 12, 1913. 



260 



CLXXIV. 

SAN REMO. 



Son oggi anima e mare due pure solitudini. 
due luminosi aszurri dove confin non e. 
Sovr'esse il gran mislero deifirmamentiinarcasi, 
e canta I'lnfinilo dentro e d'iniorno a me. 

— Marradi. 



Liguriau sea and shore ! What lovely light, 
Shot o'er the hills from softly fading day, 
Rests on thine olive groves and floods thy bay 

Now purpling slowly into star-strown night! 

The cloudy mountain crowns are silver bright; 
Below, slant splendors of the dying ray 
On towering palms and red-roofed villas play; 

Calm is the sea, broad-striped with bands of light. 

And now the angelus sounds far away 

From some old tower hid in the valley's end, 
And I too breathe a prayer for those once clay. 

The darkness comes, but kindling lights are fair, 
And all her lovely orange-gardens send 

Rich fragrance forth upon the cool night air. 



Grand H6tel de la M£diterranee, 

November 21, 1913. 
261 



CIvXXV. 

TRANSMUTATION. 

He — 

Mine, mine ! Now shines the sun in cloudless sky, 
Now sings my heart one song : "Her love is mine. 
Dear love, all roseate and all divine, 

No crowned king is richer now than I!" 

For such dear love I thank the gods on high, 
And I will drink to it in golden wine 
Of heart's desire till our two souls entwine, 

Yea, more, will love her madly till I die ! 

She. — 

My soul longs to possess him utterly, 

And plunge its empty self in love's vast main ! 
What drifting, worthless thing am I alone, 
But lost in him what heaven to find my own 
And procreate new worlds, nor mind the pain ! 
High God, grant me to love him perfectly! 



Montpellier, France, 

November 26, 1913. 



Note. — In this sonnet I have tried to portray the effect of a strong 
mutual love on two diverse natures: the man's sceptical and selfish; the 
woman's devout and unselfish. 

262 



CLXXVI. 

MINERVA: A PRAYER. 

(Suggested by the Greek fragment in the Museum at Bologna.) 

Goddess of scornful lips and flashing eyes, 
Of wavy locks with Grecian fillet bound 
Or with the awful helmet serpent-crowned, 

Thy lofty spirit stirs to high emprise ! 

Thou bringest quick'ning light from Attic skies, 
The earth thy foot hath touched is holy ground, 
And men who worship thee the whole earth round, 

Thy wisdom guides, thy strong will purifies ! 

Goddess of Learning, may thine altar fires 
Burn in our hearts with lambently clear flame 
Remaining, night and day, always the same! 
Fill us, thy worshipers, with noble thought 
That swift shall be in noble deed outwrought, 
And grant us only best of our desires ! 



P. L. M. (Rhone Valley), 

November 26, 1913. 
263 



CLXXVIII. 
THE PESSIMISTS. 

Die Geisterwelt ist nichi verschlossen; 
Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todtl 

— Goethe: Faust. I, 443-444. 

They say, who think they know life's rise and wane, 
That scarce its lambent, star-bright way begun 
The guttering flame of human life is done, 

That much we strive and little is our gain, 

That we are born in pain to end in pain, 

That ruth and love with subtle lusts are one, 
That selfishness glows in us as the sun, 

That lofty hopes and noble strife are vain. 

But I would rather be ten thousand times 
The fool of hope and radiate the sun, 
And feel that life in me has scarce begun, 
Than in their fogs of doubt despondent go, 
Assured that nothing is — above, below, 
Beyond — that with man's love and longing chimes. 



On train, New York to Washington, 
December 9, 19 13. 

264 



CLXXIX. 
TO MARGERY. 

She would have loved thee, child, from her full heart, 
As one in whom a subtle witchery lies, 
And would have followed thee with tender eyes 

Adown the years, lost to her own life's smart; 
In thee she would have seen love, mirror-wise, 

As o'er clear sands the ripple-shadows dart, 
Or dwell in stream, lovely, deep-arching skies, 

And of her own strong soul have dowered thee part. 

Dear child, I love thee too in my rough way, 
And pray the years may keep thee fair and gay, 
But most, that thou in heart shouldst be her mate : 
Lover of song, of books, of all high deeds; 
The lower self forgot in others' needs ; 
Gentle of soul, loyal, compassionate! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 27, 1913. 
265 



CLXXX. 

HELEN B. 

Warm-hearted woman-child, to sorrow born, 
Quaint, sweet Helen! Tenderly she loved thee, 

Marvelling much, her way, how meekly thorn 

And cross were borne, till time should set thee free 

Now art thou wrapped in that divine to-be 
Whereof thy girlish dreams were manifold, 

And wafted on the bosom of that sea, 

Which like an ocean o'er all time is rolled, 

Serene, thou movest, breathing larger air 

Than yielded here thy narrow, thorn-set way, 

And all thy tender small romances there 
Have space to grow in shadow of His day. 

But with some few remains thy memory here 
Till they join thee within that larger sphere. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 29, 1913. 

266 



CIvXXXI. 

STONEHENGE (I). 

(To R. A. W.) 

Alone it stands, hoary with times unknown! 
Naked and vast the undulating down 
Sweeps upward to its solemn granite crown, 

Awesome and desolate — a lost god's throne ! 

Silent as the stars, its lichen-covered stone — 
As Egypt old ! Forlorn, it seems to frown 
On Christian days, bewailing lost renown, 

While round it generations gone are blown. 

'Tis elemental now as the granite rock, 
Round it the wandering shepherd feeds his flock, 
The lowly scabious blooms, the wheat-ears flit; 

The seasons come and go; rain, wind and sun; 
Starlight and dawn — and they companion it, 

Not we! With them 't will speak when we are done! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 30, 19 13. 
267 



CXXXXII. 
THE VALLEY OF THE DANUBE. 

(October 24, 1913.) 

Blue is her sky, and blue her waters gleam! 

Green are her fields with the joy of the new-sown grain ! 

Again I see the lordly sweep of her plain, 
And the sun on the rolling flood of the Donau stream ! 

Call of the raven and flash of the bream; 

Wealth of her woods and her fields, of her brawn and her 
brain; 

Quaintness of cities and villages glimpsed from the train- 
Of that autumn day, what a glorious waking dream ! 

Then who is the man to say that life is vain? 
When graven in memory clear such pictures remain : 
The wavering golden light on mountain and plain; 

The shifting face of the earth, now dark, now bright; 

The shadows slowly deepening into night; 

The curve of the hills, faint seen in the glimmering light! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

December 31, 1913. 
268 



CLXXXIII. 

STONEHENGE (II). 

(September 3, 1913.) 

On curving crest of Sarum's great chalk plain, 
Huddled like stags at bay — despairing band — 
Its lichen-covered, rude stone-pillars stand, 

Darkened with touch of time's corroding stain 

And blood of countless victims, altar-slain, 

Where myriad sun-god men bowed head, raised hand- 
Their bones in cairns fill all the silent land, 

But who they were or when, we ask in vain! 

O incongruities of mocking Time ! 
Some lordling now has fenced great Stonehenge in, 
To reap mean shillings from our England's sin, 
Who here neglects her noblest, sacred plain 
And leaves to vagrant flight of poet's rhyme 
The praise of her most ancient Druid fane ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 1, 1914. 

269 



CLXXXIV. 

ENTOMBMENT OF CHRIST. 

(Musee Royal des Beaux-Arts d'Anvers.) 

Ouentin Metsys ! I was as one on whom 

New worlds have dawned, with more than sunrise gleam, 

When first, entranced, I saw thine Antwerp dream 
Of Jesus laved and ready for the tomb ! 
Divine of hue and form, of light and gloom ; 

In it are limned all griefs of human kind ; 

All harmonies with loveliness combined , 
Nor is forgot the lowly wild flower's bloom ! 

Painter, a great and tender soul was thine ! 
No man in Flanders soared on higher wing, 
In Italy has done a greater thing! 

In woman's love 't was wrought, as high things are— 
Her love, that was to thee a guiding star, 
A pathway leading unto things divine. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

January 4, 1914. 

270 



CLXXXV. 

MILTON, ENGLAND AND LIBERTY. 

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely 
according to conscience, above all other liberties. 

— John Milton: Areopagitica, 1644. 

Milton, thine England of the olden day 

Forbade free speech, maintained free books to be 
A great subversive power, but thanks to thee 

And thine, long hath she trod a nobler way ; 

Yea, now she knows the common sense will sway 
And opens wide her doors to heresy ; 
Yea, every wind of doctrine sweeps her sea, 

And lips of lonely exiles kiss her clay — 

For there men know that tyranny's red hand 
Is powerless over them ; there are they free, 
And stand erect, and bless a great free land ! 

Milton, whose words like mighty waters flow 
To some vast sea, lover of liberty, 

How glad thy heart, could'st thou this England know ! 



J. H. H., 

January 16, 19 14. 

271 



CLXXXVI. 

NATURE AND GOD. 

Under some oak or thorn-bush let me die, 
Twin-brother to the life that in it clings, 
Self hushed and lulled by tiny twittering wings, 

While silvery soft the summer clouds drift by. 

Strown far and wide there let my ashes lie, 

Where lush the clover blooms and June-grass springs, 
A source of life to lowly budding things, 

Of song to that which wings and sings on high. 

Mourn not for me become just earth and sky, 
Since they are more divine than they do seem, 

And on His hands and in His heart do lie, 
A sacred part of His eternal dream. 

Be then my scroll : Iyies one beneath this sod 
To whom all nature voiced the living God! 



J. H. H., 

January 25, 1914. 

272 



CLXXXVII. 

THREE VOICES OUT OF THE PAST 
AND AN ANSWER. 

" The absurd and erroneous maxim, or rather insanity, that liberty of 
conscience should be procured and guaranteed to every one. The path of 
this pernicious error is prepared by that full and unlimited liberty of 
thought which is spread abroad to the misfortune of Church and Stale. 
* * * With this is connected the liberty of publishing any writing of 
any kind. This is a deadly and execrable liberty for which we cannot 
feel sufficient horror." — Pope Gregory XVI : Encyclical (1833). 

' ' Ejusmodi pesles [Socialism, communism, secret societies, Bible societies, 
liberal clerical societies], — Pope Pius IX: Syllabus errorum (1864). 

"His also the duly of bishops to prevent writings infected with modernism 
or favorable to it from being read when they have been published and to 
hinder their publication when they have not. * * * The Holy See 
neglects no means to put down writings of this kind, but the number of 
them has now grown to such an extent that it is not possible to censure 
them all. — Pope Pius X: Encyclical, Pascendi dominici gregis (1907). 

First Voice: 

Long feared, the day of doom must be at hand ! 
For earth, what serpent deadlier thing can be 
Than speech of cynical strong men made free 

And books like locusts filling all the land ! 

Second Voice: 

In Italy no longer we command, 

Not less in England, France and Germany 

Are saints impugned with vilest liberty, 
Only in Spain we make a final stand ! 

Third Voice: 

We can no more the people hold in thrall, 
O God , within the narrow way and steep, 
Adown the barren hills they stray like sheep, 
Sweet herbage on the flowery plain their choice, 
And heeding never more the Shepherd's call — 

Albeit He said: "My sheep they know my voice!" 

The Multitude: 

We seek not wickedness but light, more light, 
Too long have we been told that dark is bright! 

J. H. H., 

January 28, 1914. 

27J 



CLXXXVIII. 

THE FAR EAST. 
(To H. M.) 

White Indra dreams, sods and men exist. 
— Indian saying. 

While Indra dreams, gods live, and men, and things, 
And time flows on and on, like the Ganges stream, 
But all things are a dream wrapped in a dream, 

Though unto men the sense of being clings. 

While Indra dreams, tiger and cobra live; 

Man tills the earth; rice yields its golden grain; 

Wine-palm and pipal dot the shining plain ; 
And the sacred Ganges takes what women give. 

While Indra dreams, the mystic shadows drift, 
Like multi-colored leaves before the wind ; 
Yet all seems true within the human mind, 

And life in man, the god's divinest gift; 

But only that is real which potent is 
Within the god in his eternities. 



J. H. H., 

February i, 1914. 

274 



CLXXXIX. 

THE ART OF HEALING: ANCIENT, 
MEDIAEVAL, MODERN. 

(To L. F. B.) 

Through devious ways has Art of healing passed 
Since men to him of the twisted cockatrice 
Offered, for aid, a cock in sacrifice, 

And ordered that a horoscope be cast; 

Or said: Hippocrates must better know 
Than any later man what should be done! 
Well earned they Shakespeare's jibes, Moliere's rude fun, 

Those solemn owls who purged, then let blood flow. 

All sister sciences have joined hands now 

To help Hygeia find the healing might ! 

To-day, face toward the sun, feet on the hight, 
She walks with Truth, a glory round her brow ! 

And evermore she searches hidden things, 
And evermore bears healing on her wings! 



J. H. H., 

February 5, 1914. 

275 



cxc. 
ALFOXDEN WOOD. 

(August 24, 1913.) 

With the lone dove's moan, the memorious hills resound. 
His hollies are here whose dead leaves danced in the hail, 
His sylvan paths leading up from the quiet vale; 

His beeches and oaks with their "bristled serpents" wound. 

Damp is the earth; green mosses cover the ground; 

His beloved stream babbles on in the leafy dale ; 

And floods of sunshine above it glimmer pale 
Through the top of the wood, mottling the forest round. 

A hundred sixteen happy years ago, 

Within this solemn wood and on these hills,* 
O joy, the flower of poesy had birth ! 

Here walked with Dorothy, her face aglow, 
The dreamer S. T. C, whose least word thrills, 

And that serene high priest, the young Wordsworth! 



J. H. H., 

February 8, 1914. 



*The Quantocks. 

276 



CXCI. 
SHELLEY'S ITALY. 

He is a portion of the loveliness. 
Which once he made more lovely. 

— Shelley: Adonais. 
We two will rise, and sit, and walk together. 
Under the roof of blue Ionian weather. 

— Shelley: Epipsychidion. 

Oft have I dreamed blue mornings on that bay 

Whose bitter waters healed thy mortal ills; 
And I have seen the sunset burn to gray 

Behind the rounded Euganean hills; 
Have seen the Apennines thy Pisan way; 

Those broad lagoons the night sea's perfume fills* ; 
Those inshore greens that round Sorrento play; 

That Roman grave, where holy peace distills! 

And when her sacred beauty fills my soul, 
Lifting it out of sordid human things, 
Endowing it with strong and radiant wings, 
Poet, I feel thy spirit blent with mine 
And drink renunciation's strong, sweet wine, 
Till earth's dear breast doth seem a longed-for goal ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

February 15, 1914. 



*The Venetian. 

277 



CXCII. 
MUTABILITY (II). 

Where once Atlantis stood, sea-grasses sway; 

O'er many-gated Thebes the rice fields wave; 

The jackals cry upon the ruined grave 
Of Susa, Babylon, and Nineveh; 
The streets of Cumae now are no man's way; 

And Greece herself is Time's decayed bond-slave, 

Whose templed grandeurs — plinth and architrave — 
Are wasted bones that long have moldered gray. 

The generations born to Mother Earth 
Make one vast tomb of her who gave them birth, 
And scant their recompense for endless strife — 

Some joy, much toil, much grief, and then the pall : 
For swift and tragic is our human life, 

And long and dark the night that covers all ! 

Alone remains immutable one gleam: 

The winged hope born of the poet's dream ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

February 17, 1914. 

278 



CXCIII. 
CENACOLO VINCIANO. 

(Milan, November, 1913.) 

Io son rapito, mai maravigliato, 
Al terzo cielo, quando nella chiesa 
Domenicana vedo questa cena 
Cosi alta e scura del grande Leonardo. 

Sono moltissimi i spiriti, maestro, 
E nobilissimi, per tua pittura 
Esaltati, co'al una cima antica,* 
Pittura che fa sacro il tuo Milano. 

E quando svaniranno interamente 
I sui fosehe traceie del muro vecchio 
I sui vivi ricordi restaranno: 

Dei discepoli l'occhiata soprisa; 
Del Redentore, piu afflitto e dolce, 
Iv'occhiata — "Tun di voi me tradira." 



On train, Washington to Madison, 
June 16, 1914. 



*Greek art in the time of Pericles. 

279 



CXCIV. 

FOR A PLACE IN THE SUN. 

(France, Belgium, Poland, or another.) 

Orandum est ut sit mens Sana in corpore sano. 
— Juvenal X, 356. 

By an empire's sorrow swayed, thus wrote in age 
That bard whose memory trod the frightful round 

From Domitian back to him who mad with rage 

And all the lusts burned Rome, and loved the sound ! 

Mad Caesars drenched the elder world with blood, 

And o'er the groaning mediaeval time 
By light of flaming homes rolled their grim flood 

Of dead men's bones and inexpungeable crime. 

Nor are those raging Teuton Caesars sane 

Who conquest-mad now barter lives for power ! 

Crass luxury, race hatred, fierce disdain, 
These, clamoring, urge them on ! Hell rules the hour ! 

Mens sana— No! Still Europe's blood is spilled; 
And still the Roman's prayer is unfulfilled! 



Washington, D. C, 
December 6, 1914. 



280 



cxcv. 
A SNOW STORM IN THE WOODS. 

An endless cloud of white- winged angry bees, 

A buzzing world in Brobdingnagian swarm, 
The somber sky lets fall on the swaying trees 

When the wind from his mantle shakes the blinding storm. 

Then over the woods that stretch gaunt limbs to the swarm 
And over the naked fields, that cower and freeze, 

Criss-cross, singing and stinging their way in the storm, 
The myriad snow-bees fly where the storm-winds please. 

Dark wood and meteor-world wherein I dream, 

Buffeting on beside the swift dark stream, 
Sole neighbors here a nuthatch there a crow, 
How good, as glimmering daylight wanes, to know 

That face of friend and hearth-fire's radiant gleam 
Wait me beyond your wilderness of snow I 



December 27, 1914. 

281 



CXCVI. 

SCANDAL. 

And thus it appears: how seldom we weigh our 
neighbor in the same balance with ourselves. 

— Thomas a Kempis. 

I,et me not tell what I have heard of shame 
Told of my brother-man! Let me be dumb, 
Lest in the shameless telling I become 

One with the thought that leaves a tarnished name ! 

A little scornful word may dull his fame 

That else had been sun-clear of dross and scum, 
Make his soul bitter, leave aspiration numb, 

Or from his little, kindle greater blame ! 

My God! do I not know how hard it is 
Never to be from justice passion-hurled ! 

To bide in will and deed unsoiled of hell ! 
To walk with blameless feet a thorny world ! 
Then why should I think aught of him but well 
Who, falling, strives? My path, is it not his? 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

July 4, 1915. 

282 



CXCVII. 

VASTNESS. 

Lord, what are we that struggle, dream and pray! 
For every star whose image ocean keeps 
A hundred million glow in those vast deeps 

The telescope reveals, light-years away! 

From some vast whence to some vast whither go 
These hurtling multitudes — constrained and blind! 
Drifting like chaff before a mighty wind, 

Eons they burn and detonate and glow ! 

Nay more ! For every whirling sun that's bright 
Ten thousand dark stars sweep their chilly way 
— Dead suns or stuff for worlds of later day — 

Across lone ether voids in age-long night. 

Brave must that spirit be, yea utterly, 
That quails not, Lord, at thine infinity ! 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

May 11, 1915. 

283 



PROJECTED SONNETS. 

(Most of these subjects were matters of common interest to us.) 



The Neighbors. 

Dante's Vita Nuova. 

Stray Dogs and Cats. 

Child and Mother (the child's 
view) . 

Ancient Egypt. 

Mother and Child (the father's 
view). 

Sharp Eyes. The Amazon. 

The Mississippi. 

The Sacred Mountain (Varese) . 

Early Loneliness. The Tiber. 

The Thames. The Rhine. 

The Quiet Life. 

The Nuptial Flight of Ants. 

Russian Music. 

Dante's Inferno. 

The Joy of Life. 

Self-Restraint. 

Childhood Days. 

The Children of Men. 

The Italian Lakes. 

The Eastern Alps from Venice. 

Folk Lore. Dumb Things. 

Holy Week at Baracoa. 

Forgiveness of Sins. 

The Scientific Imagination. 

Grief (using French lines). 

Gray Days (internal). 

A Church Procession in Bo- 
logna. 

Bayard Taylor. 

Boy's Face of Sidney Lanier. 

Dante's Wife. Pain. 



The Egyptian Book of the 
Dead. 

Sense of Color. Ancestors. 

The Fear of Death. 

Grimm's Maerchen. 

Midnight and Morning (in- 
terior — wash on shore — 
surge bell). 

The Quantock Hills (the 
young Coleridge and 
Wordsworth) . 

December, August, May — At 
Woods Hole. 

Noon and Afternoon (drowsy; 
bees). 

The Struggle for Existence. 

October Woods. Hell. 

Sir Walter Scott (Meg Mer- 
rilies, Edie Ochiltree, Dan- 
die Dinmont). 

Wind and Rain in Autumn. 

Demeter. Home Life. 

Milton. The Eternal City. 

Kismet. The Catacombs. 

Cocumella or Sorrento. 

Pico (dead — in the clouds). 

Stromboli (Vulcan). 

Solfatara (dead — under sea). 

Tahiti. The Coliseum. 

Cuban Seas (bones of battle 
ships). 

Italian Peasant Life. 

The Gates of the Mediterran- 
ean. 



285 



The Full Moon over Gibraltar. 

A Sunset in South Carolina. 

Brown Races. The Fetish. 

A Sin of Patriotism. 

The Curse of Race Hatreds. 

Milton in Italy. Jean Ingelow. 

Varuna. Jotunheim. Yoga. 

Christina Rossetti. TheDevas. 

The Confessional. 

Ghosts (primitive beliefs). 

Longfellow. Whittier. 

Epictetus. Heine. 

Faust. Socialism and War. 

Goethe's Home in Frankfort. 

On Reading Goethe's Italien- 
ische Reise. 

Byron in Italy. 

Maryland Tide-water Rivers. 

Letters of Keats. 

Coleridge. Sill. 

Charles Lamb (Essays). 

Charles Dickens. 

Swinburne. Solidarity. 

Soledad del Morte. 

War Among Christians. 

Wagner's Lohengrin. 

Alfred de Musset (A Night in 
December). 

Francois Villon. 

The Two Heredias (Faith- 
Scepticism). 

Washington Irving. 

Lamartine (melancholy). 

George Sand (on reading her 
journal) . 

Turner. Gainsborough. 

Hogarth. 



On Reading for the Third Time 
Hallam Tennyson's Me- 
moir of his Father. 

Huxley and the Bishops. 

Protoplasm. 

Primitive Man. 

The Mill-wheel. 

The Women of Shakespeare. 

The Drunkards of Shakespeare 
(Uncle Toby, Falstaff, etc.). 

The Children of Shakespeare 
(pathetic). 

The London of Shakespeare 

The Clowns of Shakespeare. 

The Loves of Goethe. 

Ghosts of Dead Years. 

Eberswalde (deep beech and 
pine forests). 

Spreewalde (Forest of Arden 
effect). 

Potsdam (Ghosts of Frederick 
and Voltaire). 

Our Brothers of the Field. 

Rotterdam (Erasmus). 

The Marsh at Sunset 

(S. C. storm, thunder- clap, 
flight of frightened birds) . 

Sunrise on the Marshes, S. C. 

Storm at Sea. London Streets. 

Venice at Night. 

Snow Storm or Sleet Storm. 

Monasticism. 

Street Life in Naples. 

Storm on Lake Erie. 

San Georgio Maggiore in 
Venice. 

A Swiss Village. 

Mediaevalism. The Odyssey. 



286 



Jeremiah. Isaiah. 
Homer's Underworld. 
Vishnu. Thor. Siva. 
Nanna (Balder's wife. The 

mistletoe). 
David Swing (Preacher of 

Righteousness). 
The Pine Woods of the South 

(hot resinous odors). 
The Pine Woods of the North 

(dark, cool, soughing). 
Booth's Hamlet. 
Partridge's Tennyson. 
The Discords of Life. 
Charles Darwin. Cruelty. 
The Arctic Summer. 
Weakness (moral). 
Weakness (physical). 
The Body. Duty. 
The Universe of God. 
Bibles (old and new). 
Fog at Sea (terrible, rolling in 

swiftly on us in asailboat). 
Polar Jungles (Tertiary times). 
The Gulf Stream (blue in the 

green ocean). 
Indigo Seas (West Indies). 
Jules BreTon (painter, poet). 
A Bronze Buddha (Benares). 
Rousseau (painter). Corot. 
Jean Jacques Rousseau and the 

French Revolution. 
Rembrandt (Poet-painter). 
Rembrandt's Unknown Grave. 
Rembrandt's House in Amster- 
dam. 
Summers by the Sea. 
English Woods and Fields. 



Galland's Arabian Nights. 

Cranford. 

Esmeralda (Hugo's Notre- 

Dame de Paris). 
Luini's Frescoes at Saronno. 
Titian (Assumption and Mary 

as a little girl before the 

high priest). 
Ruysdael's Lily Pool. 
The Brain. Walt Whitman. 
The Alpine Meadows. 
The Southern Foot Hills of the 

Alps. 
The Love of Books. 
Transmigrations. Van Dyck. 
Benares (w T here Buddha taught 

first). 
Ellen Emerson (A New Eng- 
land Saint). 
St. Francis (The Mediaeval 

Christ). 
The Greek Anthology. 
The Egyptian Underworld. 
Cicero's De Senectute. 
Angelo's Sonnets (Rugged) 
St. Peter. Isis. St. Paul. 
Osiris (The Egyptian Christ). 
The Asphodel Meadow. 
Voices of the Dead. 
Maya. Grieg. Brahms. 
Angelo (Creator). 
Modern German Poets. 
Modern English Painters. 
The Iron Age. The Ice Age. 
Islam. The Koran. Azrael. 
Edens (young loves). 
Bitter fruits (inheritance). 
The Coming Man. 



287 



TRANSLATIONS. 



Alles Vergangliche 
1st nur ein Gleichniss; 
Das Unzulangliche 
Hier wird's Ereigniss; 
Das Unbeschreibliche 
Hier ist's gethan; 
Das Kwig-Weibliche 
Zieht uns hinan. 

— Goethe: Faust II, 12104-11. 



FROM THE GERMAN. 



' , ^KHR' T ' W 1 * " ' 1 " ' * 




I. 
A MAY SONG. 

(Wie herrlich leuchtet 
Mir die Natur!) 

Goethe. 

(Time 1771, i. e., when he was 22 years old. About the 
time of his love affair with the pastor's daughter, FriederikaBrion, 
of Sesenheim, near Strassburg.) 

What glorious prospects 

Nature yields ! 
How gleams the sunlight, 

How laugh the fields ! 

From every twig 

The blossoms push, 
A thousand voices 

Well from the bush ; 

And mirth and rapture, 

From every breast. 
O earth! O sunshine! 

O happiness! O zest! 

O love! O fondness! 

So golden bright, 
Like morning clouds 

Upon that height ! 



293 



Delightfully thou dost increase 
The sweet field's worth, 

With blossom fragrance 
Dost enrich the earth. 

O maiden, maiden, 

How love I thee ! 
How beam thy glances ! 

How lov'st thou me! 

So loves the lark 

His song in heaven 
And morning flowers, 

The mists sky-given, 

As I love thee, and yield 
Heart's blood without alloy, 

Because thou giv'st to me 
Fresh youth and joy, 

For songs and dances new 

A spirit free. 
Be ever happy 

As thou lov'st me ! 



The many-sidedness of Goethe: 

Literature. — Prose; Dramatic, Epic and Lyric Poetry. 

Science. — Physics; Mineralogy; Botany; Anatomy. 

Art. Business capacity. Critical faculty. Self centered, rather selfish 
but capable of many generous emotions. Broader than the Ger- 
many of his time. Not a patriot. One of the great universal 
minds of the world. The apostle of intellectual culture. 
Peculiar relations to women: 

About twenty of these women in literature. Most of these affairs of 
the heart were before he was 27, but he was very sensitive to the 
smiles of enchantresses all his life. Women as "models." His 
marriage to his servant Christine Vulpius. 

294 



II. 
THE GODLIKE. 

(Edel sei der Mensch,) 

Goethe. 

(Time about 1781. Goethe was then about 32 years old. 
This is the Frau von Stein period.) 

Noble should man be, 

Helpful and good ! 
For that alone 

Distinguishes him 
From all existences 

Within our ken. 

Hail to the unknown, 

The Higher Ones, 
For whom we yearn ! 

May man be like them — 
His example should teach us 

In them to believe. 

For unfeeling 

Is Nature: 
The sun it shines 

On the good and the ill, 
And the moon and the stars 

Beam on the worst, 
As on the best. 
295 



Torrents and wind 

Thunder and hail 
Rush on in their way, 

Laying hold on one 
As on another 

When swiftly they pass. 

So also good fortune 

Gropes blindly the crowd, 
Seizing sometimes the youth 

Curly-headed, innocent, 
And sometimes the smooth 

And wicked crown. 

Under reverend, eternal, 

Mighty decrees 
Must we fulfil, 

Each one, 
Our being's end. 

But only the man 

Can do the impossible; 
He distinguishes, 

Chooses and judges; 
He can to the moment 

Permanence lend. 



296 



He alone is able 

The good to reward 
The bad to chastise, 

To heal and to rescue, 
All the erring and straying 

Usefully to bind. 

And we reverence 

The Immortal Ones 
As though they were men 

Doing in large 
What the best in a small way 

Does or would do. 

The noble man 

Should be helpful and good ! 
Unwearied should do 

The useful and the right, 
Be a prototype 

Of those longed-for Beings ! 



Note. Tennyson's opinion: " 'Edel sei der Mensch' is one of the noblest 
of all poems." — Memoir, Vol. II, p. 288. 

297 



III. 
THE POWERS ABOVE US. 

(Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass,) 

Goethe. 

(From Wilhelm Meister, second book. The first Weimar 
period, probably between 1780 and 1785.) 

Who never ate his bread with tears, 

Nor tossed through midnight's weary hours, 

Uneasy on his bed of fears, 

Knows not your might, ye Heavenly powers! 

Ye bring us into life amain, 

Yet let us stray from birth, 
Then loose on us the lash of pain, 

That Nemesis of guilt on earth ! 



298 



IV. 

THE WANDERERS NIGHT SONG. 

(Ueber alien Gipfeln 
1st Ruh,) 

Goethe. 

Over all the mountain helms 

Is rest, 
In all the treetop realms 
Is scarce a breath of wind 

Exprest; 
The birds in the wood are silent now. 
Wait a little, thou, 
Soon thou too shalt find 

Thy rest. 



Note: This song was written by Goethe in September, 1780, on the 
wall of a hunter's hut on the Gickelhahn, near Ilmenau. The place was 
revisited by him in 1813 and the lines reinscribed. In 1831, a few months 
before his death, he again visited the place and was feted there, recognized 
the lines and read them with tears and deep emotion. 

299 



V. 
A FRAGMENT. 

(Willst du dir ein hiibsch Leben zimmern,) 

Goethe. 

Would'st thou a fair life make thine own, 
Then must thou not o'er bygones groan, 
Nor mix thy soul with grief's alloy; 
Must evermore to-day enjoy, 
Assuredly, must no man hate, 
And wholly leave to God thy fate. 



300 



VI. 
FAREWELL TO LIFE. 

(Die Wunde brennt, die bleichen Lippen beben,) 

Theodor Koerner. 

(Done on the battle-field when severely wounded and in 
expectation of death.) 

The wound it burns, the pallid lips they quiver, 

My heart's pulsation faint to me portends 

That I have come to where my journey ends. 
God, as thou wilt! I rest in thee, the giver. 
Around me many golden shadows waver; 

In wail of death the fair dream picture ends. 

Cheer! Cheer! What my true heart defends, 
That must beyond with me remain forever! 

And what I here as holiest have learned, 
For which with youthful rashness I have burned, 
Whether as freedom or as love discerned, 
As shining seraph now before me stands; 
And when at last my mind no more commands, 
Bears me a breath to roseate morning lands. 

Evening at 1460 Belmont Street, 
March 29, 1910. 



NoTB: Koerner was born in 1791, and died at 22 (18 13) from a wound 
received in battle. He was son of Christian Gottfried Koerner, Schiller's 
intimate friend. For a time Koerner was an idol of the German people. 

301 



VII. 
THE DEAD MAIDEN. 

(Es zogen drei Bursche wohl iiber den Rhein,) 
Uhland. 

Three students by chance strolled over the Rhine, 

And stopped with mine hostess to sample her wine. 
"Frau hostess! Have you good beer and wine? 

And where have you hid your daughter fine?" 
"My vintage and brew are cool and clear, 

Alas, my daughter lies dead on her bier." 
And when they had entered the room 

There lay the maiden prepared for the tomb. 
The first drew the face-cloth awry 

And gazed on the dead with sorrowful eye. 
"O did'st thou yet live, my beautiful one, 

My love should not fail from this time on." 
The second the grave cloth drew over 

And turned weeping away like a lover, 
"Alas, that she lies on death's cold bier 

Whom I have loved so many a year." 
The third quickly tore away the veil 

And kissed her on the lips so pale, 
"I loved you ever, I love you to-day 

And love you I will eternally." 



Note: Uhland (1787-1862) suffered for his political views. His songs 
were many times set to music by the best composers and have become true 
folk-songs. This one is rather beery. 

302 



VIII. 
LOTUS. LOVE. 

(Die Lotusblume angstigt) 
Heine. 

The lotus chalice shrinks 

Before the sun's fierce light, 
And dreamily on nodding stem 

Awaits the coming night. 

The moon is her lover, 

She wakes at his silver grace, 
And softly unveils for him 

The charms of her gentle face. 

For love and love's longing 

Her fragrance is shed, 
While mutely she gazes with tears and sighs 

On high where her lover has fled. 



NOTE: Heine (1799-1856) owed much to his mother and his uncle. The 
latter paid for his legal studies. His father wished him to be a merchant: 
failure. Then a lawyer: failure again. Studied law three years, and 
renounced Judaism to obtain a public law position but did not get it. 
Finally accepted letters as his chosen field and settled in Paris. With 
passage of an act in 1835 forbidding sale of his writings in Germany he fell 
into great poverty. Released by a pension of 4,800 francs from the French 
Government which he received annually for twelve years. Then a revolu- 
tion reduced him to poverty once more. Like Goethe he married his 
mistress. This woman, Mathilde Mirat, remained faithful to him all his 
life. During the last eight years of his life he was bedridden but continued 
to write to the end. Heine was romantic, wicked, full of tender feeling, 
very original, full of humor, a spendthrift in youth, ironical, democratic, 
interested in humanity, and a social, friendly man. He is still hated in 
Germany. He satirized the government, army, nobility, clergy, ministry, 
and professors. Two big books have been published in Germany recently 
to show that Heine is in no proper sense a German. For his "Buch der 
Licder" he received 50 louis d'or, and the shrewd publisher sold 10,000 
copies. 

303 



IX. 

M A Y T I M E. 

(Im wunderschonen Monat Mai,) 

Heine. 

(1822 or 1823.) 

In the heavenly month of May, 
When all the buds were springing, 

And all the birds were singing, 
Love was born within my heart, 

And all my longings unto her I did impart, 
In the heavenly month of May. 



304 



X. 

A DEAD LOVE. 

(Die Welt ist so schon und der Himmel so blau,) 
Heine. 
(1822 or 1823.) 

The earth is so fair and the heaven so blue, 
And the breezes blow so gentle and low, 

And the blossoms smile on the flowery plain, 
And sparkle and glitter in morning's dewy rain, 

And the people rejoice wherever I go, 
Yet I would I were dead in the ground, 
In the arms of my dead love wound. 



305 



XI. 

TWILIGHT. 

(Wir sassen am Fischerhause) 

Heine. 

(Time 1823 or 1824.) 

We sat near the fisher's house 
And gazed on the sea hard by. 

The evening mists came on 
And climbed up to the sky. 

The lights in the lighthouse 
One by one were kindled, 

And far, Oh far away, 
One ship still dwindled. 

We spoke of storm and wreck, 
Of the sailor and how he lives, 

And tossed from sea to sky, 
His heart to joy and sorrow gives. 

We talked of far-off coasts : 
To south and to north we fare, 

Beholding the barbarous peoples, 
And wondrous customs there. 



306 



On Ganges it shimmers and fragrance exhales, 
Gigantic trees their blooms unseal, 

And beautiful silent men, 
By lotus blossoms kneel. 

In Lapland are dirty people, 

Flatheaded, broad-muzzled and small, 
They crouch round the fire and bake 

Themselves fish, and chatter and call. 

Earnestly the maidens listened, 

At last no one spoke more — 
The ship it could not be seen, 

The darkness had covered it o'er. 



3°7 



XII. 

LUCK IN LOVE. 

(Wer zum erstenmale liebt) 
Heine. 
(Time 1823 or 1824.) 

Who the first time loves 

Is a god, if he's happy or not, 
But who a second time 

Luckless loves, he is a fool. 
And I am that fool; again 

I love, no love returned; 
Sun and moon and stars they jeer, 

And I laugh too — and perish. 



308 



XIII. 

PHILOSOPHY. 

(Zu fragmentarisch ist Welt und Leben) 

Heine. 

(Time 1823 or 1824.) 

Too fragmentary is the world and life — 
I will hie me to some German professor, 

Who knows how life should go together, 

And he will make a comprehensible system out of it ; 

With his nightcap strings and his bedgown shreds 
He will stop the gaps in the world house. 



309 



XIV. 

A DREAM. 

(Mir traumt' : ich bin der liebe Gott) 

Heine. 

(Time 1823 or 1824.) 

I had a dream: I was the dear Lord God, 

And sat in heaven upraised, 
And angels sat about 

And all my verses praised. 

And cakes and candies did I eat, 

At cost of many a florin gay, 
And cardinal I drank therewith, 

And had no debts to pay. 

And yet I wisht I was on earth, 

For ennui plagued me sore, 
And were I not the dear Lord God, 

The devil's would I be once more. 

You lanky angel Gabriel, 

Go, nor slow about it be, 
And my dear friend Eugene 

Thou shalt him straightway bring to me. 



310 



Seek him not in college halls, 

But where the Tokay flows, inquire; 

Seek him not in Hedwig church, 
Seek him by Mam'sell Meyer. 

This angel then his wings spread out 

And flew straight down, 
And found him out and brought him up, 

This friend, this well-beloved clown. 

Yes, youngster, I'm the dear L,ord God, 

And I rule o'er the earth, 
I've always told you, too, 

That I would yet do things of worth. 

And I work wonders every day, 

Which would enchant you. 
And for your merriment to-day, 

I will Berlin review. 

The paving stones upon the street 
They shall right now split open wide, 

And an oyster fresh and clear 
Shall in every stone reside. 



311 



A rain of lemon juice 

Shall dewy them besprinkle so, 
And in the city drains 

The best Rhine wine shall flow. 

How the Berliners do rejoice, 
Already they begin to gobble; 

The High-court lords, 
They swill upon the cobble. 

And how the poets do enjoy themselves, 

In such a revel of the gods! 
The lieutenants and the ensigns, 

They lick up the streets in squads. 

The lieutenants and the ensigns, 

They are the cleverest folk ! 
They think: No such a wonder 

Did ever any other day evoke. 



312 



XV. 

THE DEVIL. 

(Ich rief den Teufel, und er kam,) 

Heine. 

(Time 1823 or 1824.) 

I called the devil and he came, 

And with surprise his figure I did scan. 
He is not ugly and he is not lame, 

He is a dear and charming man, 
A man that's in his prime, 

Obliging and polite and conversant with every clime. 
He is a skillful diplomate 

And speaks right well of church and state. 
If somewhat pale he is, 'tis no surprise, 

His mind to Sanscrit and to Hegel he applies. 
His best-loved poet still remains Fouqu6, 

Yet of criticism no more is he a lover, 
This has he now entirely given over 

To his dear grandam Hecate. 
My legal studies he with pleasure noted, 

Himself was formerly thereto devoted. 
He said my friendship must not be 

Too dear for him, and nodded me 
And asked: Have we not met before — 

Once at the Spanish minister's levee? 
And as with care I looked him o'er, 

I was aware that old acquaintances were we. 
3>3 



XVI. 
A WARNING. 

(Solche Biicher lasst du drucken !) 
Heine. 

Oh, how dare you print such books ! 

Dear, my friend, your state's a lost one! 
Would' st thou gold and honor gather, 

Then bend low with humble looks. 

Ne'er did I advise you so to tempt the fates ! 

So to speak before the people, 
So to speak of clergymen, 

And lordly potentates ! 

Friend, for you I've worst of fears! 

Princes they are known to have long arms, 
Clergymen they have long tongues, 

And the people have — long ears ! 



3'4 



XVII. 

NIGHT THOUGHTS. 

(Denk' ich an Deutschland in der Nacht,) 

Heine. 

Think I on German land at night, 
Then I am brought to sleepless plight, 
I cannot close my eyes at all, 
And hot my tears will fall. 

The years they come, the years grow old ! 
Since I my mother did behold, 
Into the past twelve years have flown; 
And ever has my longing grown. 

My longing groweth evermore, 
The mother hath bewitched me sore; 
Still think I on the one who's old, 
The mother old, whom may God hold! 

No end of love the old Frau sends, 
And in the letters which she pens 
I see in forms her hand has taken 
How deep the mother heart is shaken. 



3'5 



The mother dwells upon my mind. ■ 
Twelve outstretched years have sped like wind, 
Twelve long, long years their ways have told, 
Since her dear heart my own did fold. 

The German land for aye shall stand, 
It is a heart-sound land, 
And by its oak and linden cover, 
That land it shall be known forever. 

But toward that land with no such care, 
I'd long, were not the mother there; 
The Fatherland will last alway, 
The mother old — she may not stay. 

Since I that German land have known, 
So many there the grave has made its own, 
Those I had loved — when I do count them o'er, 
My soul drops blood, and more and more. 

And I must count them — with the count 

My torments ever higher mount; 

It is, as if upon my breast the dead 

Held carnival — Thank God! The dawn is red! 

Thank God ! Now through my window, bright 
There gleams the cheerful French daylight; 
My wife comes like the morning fair 
And smiles away the German care. 



316 



XVIII. 

THE WEAVERS. 

(Im diistern Auge keine Thrane,) 

Heine. 

(Time — between 1839 and 1846. This song is still pro- 
hibited in Germany, it is said.) 

Their gloomy eyes no tears have wet, 
They sit by the loom and their teeth are set: 
German land, we weave the cloth for thy hearse, 
We are weaving therein the threefold curse — 
We are weaving, weaving! 

A curse for the brazen god we implore 
In the winter's cold and our hunger sore; 
We have waited and hoped but all in vain, 
By him we've been fooled and held in disdain — 
We are weaving, weaving ! 

A curse for the king, the king of the land 
For our woes have not reached his heart or his hand; 
By force he would take the last groschen we've got 
And allow us like dogs to be shot — 

We are weaving, weaving ! 



3«7 



A curse be on false Fatherland, 
Where dishonor and shame are on every hand, 
Where every flower is snatched from sight, 
Where rottenness and mold the worms invite — 
We are weaving, weaving! 

The shuttle flies, the loom it creaks alway, 
We are weaving steadily night and day — 
Old German land — the cloth for thy hearse, 
We are weaving therein the threefold curse — 
We are weaving, weaving! 



318 



XIX. 

POESIE. 

(Poesie ist tiefes Schmerzen,) 
Justinus Kerner. 
(Lived 1786 to 1862.) 

Poesie is deepest smart, 
And the truest song upwells 

Only from the human heart 
Wherein lasting sorrow dwells. 

But the songs of purest feeling 
Silence like the deepest smart, 

Only like to shadows stealing 
Move they through the broken heart. 



Note: Kerner was a very hospitable, friendly man. He entertained a 
great deal. He was a physician and a spiritualist. 

319 



XX. 

THE HEART. 

(Zwei Kammern hat das Herz,) 

Hermann Neumann. 

(1808—) 

Two chambers has the heart, 

Where joy and sorrow dwell apart. 
When joy in the one awakes, 
In the other sorrow slumber takes. 

O joy, speak low and great care take 

That grief does not awake! 



320 



XXI. 

THE HUMAN WILL. 

(Willst gutes du und schones schaffen,) 
Juuus Hammer. 
(1810-1862.) 

Wouldst thou the good and fair create, 

With living fullness round thy life, 
Then must thou gird up thine estate, 

Nor aught consider heavy strife. 
No wishes help, no idle fancy's play, 

No dream that days will mend thy state; 
No, thou must struggle with thy clay, 

And mightily compel it into shape ! 



321 



XXII. 

THE HEART'S ANSWER. 

(Mein Herz, ich will dich f ragen :) 

Fribdrich Halm. 

(1806-1871.) 

My heart, I will question thee: 
Tell me, I pray, what's love? 
"Two souls with but one thought, 
Two hearts with but one throb!" 

And tell from whence comes love? 

'"Twas not, and now 'tis here!" 
And how does love depart? 

"True love departeth ne'er!" 

And what is perfect love? 

"That which its own foregoes!" 
And when is love the deepest? 

" 'Tis when it stillest flows!" 

And when is love the richest? 

"'Tis richest when it gives!" 
And pray what voice has love? 

"No voice! her love she lives!" 



322 



XXIII. 

CO-WORKERS WITH GOD. 

(Gehe hin in Gottes Namen,) 

K. T. Ph. Spitta. 

(1801-1859 — Religious hymns and songs; many now in 
the hymn-books.) 

(No attempt to keep the rhymes.) 

Forth in God's own name, 

Joyously take up thy work, 
Early scatter well thy seed, 

What is done, is done. 
Look not toward the distance, 

What lies near thee must thou do, 
Thou must sow, if thou wouldst reap, 

Only toiling ones shall know the joy of rest. 
And of daydreams be thou wary, 

Welcome labor, nothing stinted, 
Then shall be at eventide with honor 

On thy brow the sweat of day. 
None can tell thee what shall prosper, 

What miscarry : only be thou certain 
God's own blessing follows 

All thy worthy deeds. 



323 



XXIV. 

AT SEA. 

(Wie so rein des Himmels Blaue) 

Anastasius Grun. 

(Lived 1806 to 1876. Anastasius Grim is a pseudonym for 
the Austrian Count Auersperg.) 

O'er my head I naught discern, 

Save the gleaming vault of blue, 
Strong, and bright as truth eterne, 

Unconfined and changeless too ! 

Like the peace eternal sheeneth 
Restful, clear, and green the sea, 

And the sun above it beameth, 
Bright as holy love can be. 

Free and light o'er rocking billow, 

Holds the ship her steady way, 
Proud the white sails fill and flow, 

Freedom's victor banners they. 



324 



Sun and sea and Heaven's deep azure, 
Only these 'round keel and prow ! 

Love and freedom, peace and pleasure ! 
Answer — What more needest thou? 

Oh! If breezes from the land, 
Might a green leaf waft to me, 

Or a blossom from the strand, 
Bring its message o'er the sea. 



325 



XXV. 

THE WATER LILY. 

(Die stille Wasserrose) 
Emanuel Geibel. 
(Lived 1815-1884.) 

The silent water-lily- 
Shoots up from the azure below, 

Her dampened leaves atremble, 
Her calyx white as snow. 

The moon from Heaven its splendor, 
Its wealth of golden light, 

Into her bosom raineth 

Through all the silent night. 

Around the lily's chalice 

Doth sail a snow-white swan, 

And sweet and low he singeth, 
The while he looks thereon, 

A plaintive song and tender, 
Where love and death combine. 

O lily! Snow white lily! 
Canst thou that song divine? 



Note : Geibel was born and died in Lubeck. He was University professor 
in Munich and two years in Greece with Curtius as a young man. His 
poems exhibit: (1) romanticism, (2) melancholy, (3) Greek feeling, (4) 
catholic breadth, (5) patriotic feeling, (6) sympathy with nature, (7) 
religious feeling. He made many translations from Greek and Latin and 
from Spanish and Portuguese. At his funeral a copy of the 100th Edition 
of his poems was placed in his coffin. He has been called the Longfellow 
of Germany. 

Jede sprossende Pflanze, Every budding plant 

Die mit Diiften sich fiillt, By its odor revealed 

Tragt in Kelche das ganze Bears in its calyx cup 

Weltgeheimnis verhullt. The whole world riddle concealed. 

[1845.] 

These verses are earlier than Tennyson's, "Flower in the crannied wall." 

326 



XXVI. 
I SAILED FROM ST. GOAR. 

(Ich fuhr von Sanct Goar) 
Emanuel Geibel. 

From Saint Goar to the mountains 

I sailed the green Rhine; 
An ancient man with silver hair 

Was helmsman mine. 

But little we did say; 

Down stream the rocks sailed fast 
Upon the mirroring wave, 

And my thoughts were on the past. 

And when the palace at Caub 

Was over against our beam, 
Came the sound of clear singing 

From a ship which sailed with the stream. 

The evening's ruddy glow 

Upon the white sails shone; 
And students sat therein, 

Round whom were vine leaves thrown. 

From hand to hand the cup 

Of luster green was past; 
And, golden-haired, a maid 

Stood fair beside the mast ; 

327 



And down upon the flood 

She scattered roses red, 
And gave us greeting there 

As softly by we sped. 

And hark — I now heard clear 

What they were singing : 
'Twas one of mine own songs, 

Once sung, from far returning : 

Made drunk with the sunshine of May, 

I sang it years agone, 
When I like them by Rhine 

A student was at Bonn. 

How strange from strangers' lips 

Upon my ear it swelled! 
Out of the depths of my heart 

Nostalgia upwelled. 

I listened till the sound 

Upon the wind was lost; 
Long watched the waters where 

The shining boat was tost. 

As on and on it went, 

Back would my glances stray; 
To me it seemed therein 

My youth was borne away. 



328 



XXVII. 

THE GIPSY BOY IN THE NORTH. 

(Fern im Siid das schone Spanien,) 
Emanuel, Geibei,. 

Far to south lies lovely Spain, 

Spain that is my own dear land, 
Where the shady chestnuts rain 

Leafy music on the Ebro strand, 
Where pink-tinted almonds blow, 

Where the fiery cluster gleams 
And the roses fairer glow 

And the moonlight goldener beams. 

Now I wander with my lute 

Sadly on from place to place, 
For no bright eyes do me salute 

Nor do friendly glances meet my face. 
Meagerly they dole me pittance sad, 

Sternly drive me from the land; 
Oh, the brown-skinned beggar lad 

Will no mortal understand! 



329 



Clouds they weigh on me like wrongs, 

Cloudy skies my sunshine blot, 
And the old-time merry songs 

Have I all almost forgot. 
Ever now into my songs 

Come the selfsame yearning strains : 
"Tis for home my spirit longs, 

For the land where sunshine reigns ! 

When of late in harvest feste 

Famous singing dances they have made, 
Have I freshly all the best 

Of my music for them played. 
Yet as couples wound the dance's pace 

In the evening's sunny gold, 
Down my dusky face 

Hot the tears have rolled. 



330 



Oh, I thought of merry dances 

In the land in which my fathers rest, 
Where in fragrant moonbeam's glances 

There is freer breath for every breast, 
Where, the zither's tones begun, 

Every footstep winged feels 
And the laddie with his fair one 

Glowing the fandango reels. 

Nay! I can not longer hide 

Yeanlings of my throbbing breast; 
Every other joy denied 

Let me have the homeland zest. 
Southward! Toward the land that's Spain's 

Will I journey! 'Neath the chestnuts' shade, 
In the land where sunshine reigns 

Shall at last my grave be made. 



33* 



XXVIII. 

THE FOREST. 

(Im Walde leben, im Walde sterben,) 
Johanna Ambrosius. 

In forest to live, in forest to die, 

What fairer lot! 
For bed the blossoms, for grave and grave-stone 

The green moss-plot. 

Dragon-flies shimmer through the holy gloom 

Like jewels rare, 
And ivy winds round lofty elms 

Embraces fair. 

The trees they murmur in evening wind 

Many a sweet song, 
And softly it drips from lofty branches 

On leaves and sedges in throng. 

So stretched out there in sweet repose, 

Remote from sorrow, 
Oh sweet the eyes to close and blest to dream 

With no to-morrow! 



Note: Johanna Ambrosius was born in East Prussia in 1854. She was 
the daughter of a poor mechanic. She and her sister learned to read and 
had " Gartenlaube " for which the father subscribed. She had no education 
worth mentioning. Her years of hard work began at eleven; at twenty 
she married a peasant lad as poor as herself and for the next twelve years 
led the hard life of the peasant women, working in the fields and stables 
side by side with her husband, without books or papers to read. Two 
children were born, a boy and a girl. Poverty, sickness, and sorrow of soul 
oppressed her. Suddenly she found relief in song; her first poem is said 
to have been written in 1 8S4. The first edition of her poems was published 
in 1894 and brought her the unexpected sum of 500 marks. This was the 
beginning of easier days. Many editions followed in rapid succession, and 
a second volume was published. The first volume has now passed through 
forty-two editions, and the second volume eight (in 1898). Up to the 
beginning of her career as a poet she was unfamiliar with the German poets. 
Her range of singing is narrow, but within it she exhibits much power and 
pathos. Ambrosius is her maiden name. 

332 



XXIX. 

FIRST LOVE. 

(Zarte, maiengriine Liebe,) 
Johanna Ambrosius. 

Tender, May-green love, 

When I think on thee my eyes are wet with tears; 
Thou art like a milk-white dove 

Driven through the forest by its fears. 
Thou art sweet as morning song of birthplace bells, 
Pure as primal draught from Heaven's wells. 

Fragrance from that azure bloom 

Which the God in his own bosom bears, 

Altar image, face to whom 

Bows the sinner low and fealty swears. 

Pristine love, no cause art thou for jest! 

Callous hearts by thee are won from their cold rest. 

No one e'er forgets thee quite, 
Star-hemmed, tender morning red, 

Not though to us given richest life, 
Light of thousand golden suns upon us shed. 

Evermore our fairest daydream must thou be, 

Lovely, first-born bloom upon life's tree. 



333 



XXX. 

HOME COMING. 

(Mutter, stell' wieder die Ofenbank so,) 
Johanna Ambrosius. 

Mother, again draw the seat to the fire, 

Where it stood in the long ago, 
Sit down thereon and let thy hand 

As once o'er my hair move soft and slow. 

Sole comforting place ! 

My head on thy breast I will lay. 
O world, with thy smothering burdens, 

Thy woe, how far art thou now away! 

Kiss my brow, 'tis burning hot, 
No more to the maiden your kisses go, 

The spot where your lips now rest 
Will by nothing be healed, I know. 

Restore my shattered trust. 

You take me as I am! Your love I keep, 
The world cannot rob me of this ! 

Now, little mother, sing, Oh sing me to sleep. 



334 



XXXI. 

WOMANHOOD. 

(Die reinen Frauen stehn im Leben) 

Julius Rodenberg. 

(1831- . Professor of Poetry. Founder of "Deutsche 
Rundschau." — Author of many books.) 

Pure women are in human life 

Like roses 'mong their dusky leaves : 

Upon their wishes and their noble strife 

Lies ever finest blossom dust. 

In their fair world is no defect, 

There all is quiet, soft, complete: 

A glance into a woman's soul 

Is like a glimpse of paradise. 

Well dost thou listen unto lofty souls, 

Well dost thou honor manhood's strength ; 

Thy masters they shall teach thee all 

That's possible in science and in art. 

Yet what is noblest here below, 

The symbol of the infinite, 

What beauty is, and poetry, and peace — 

These only women thee can teach ! 



335 



XXXII. 

ESTIMATE OF WOMEN, CALLED 
"MADCHENLIED." 

(Gestern, Madchen, ward ich weise,) 

Fr. Nietzsche. 

(No effort to keep the rhymes, i. e., not worth it.) 

Yesterday, maiden, was I wise, 

Yesterday was I seventeen — 
Now do I compare to grayest 

Of the grisly — but not in hair. 

Yesterday there came to me a thought — 
A thought? Mockery and scorn ! 

Came there ever a thought to you ? 
A feeling rather, let us say! 

Seldom ventures she to think, 

For the ancient wisdom says : 
"Woman she shall follow not direct: 
Thinks she, then she will not follow." 

Nor believe I ever what she says ; 

As a flea so jumps she, and so bites ! 
"Rarely thinks the womankind, 

When she does, 'tis good for nothing!" 



336 



Wisdom old and handed down 

Best of reverence to you ! 
Hear ye now my wisdom new 

Quintessence of all that's newest! 

Yesterday there spoke in me, as ever 

In me speaks: Now hear me out: 
"Fairer is the womankind 

But more interesting is— the man!" 



Note: In another place Nietzsche said: "Thou goest to women? Forget 
not thy whip!" And again: "Woman is not even shallow!" 

In a recent book: "Der einsame Nietzsche" (Leipzig, Alfred Kroner) his 
sister Elisabeth Forster Nietzsche maintains that Nietzsche's sharp, scornful 
words about women apply only to the "emancipated ones," but it is not 
clear why she supposed this explanation would help his case; nor is it clear 
to me how any independent, self-respecting woman can be interested in 
Nietzsche's vagaries. 

For his master's estimate of women, see the curious essay "fjber die 
Weiber" in Schopenhauer's collected works. It forms Chapter XXVII of 
"Vereinzelte, jedoch systematisch geordnete Gedanken liber vielerlei Gegen- 
stande," in my copy (Inselverlag : Leipzig). 

There is a new spirit in German poetry, mostly since 1870. 
Some great names: Sentiments: 

Nietzsche. Worship of power. Avoidance of pain. 

Jordan. The right of might. Agnosticism. 

Liliencron. Pleasure. Worship of beauty. 

Conradi. Self-interest. Lower estimate of women. 

Bierbaum. 

This new spirit in poetry is like the new spirit in art — very different from 
the old. It smacks of the frivolous side of Paris and of scientific materialism . 
It is less German and less interesting than the older singing. "Jugend" gives 
one a good idea of what some of the younger men are trying to do. 

The above judgment was written and printed before the events of the 
great German war, which events, so far as Germany is concerned, can be 
no surprise to anyone familiar with modern German literature, either in 
prose or verse, since they have their root in sentiments of world-domination 
broadcast over Germany for a generation and entering into all her life. 

337 



FROM THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN. 



XXXIII. 

THE ANTIQUE MEDAL. 

(I/Etna murit toujours la pourpre et l'or du vin) 
Jose-Maria de Heredia. 

Still Aetna ripens wine of gold and purple stain 
Wherewith antique Erigone warmed Theocrite, 
But the graceful maids from whom his verses caught delight, 

The poet now would seek for them in vain. 

From her profile losing the purity divine, 
Arethusa, slave and favorite by turns, 
Has mingled in her vein, where Greek blood burns, 

The Saracen fury with the hauteur Angevine. 

All yields to time: even the marble its use. 
Agrigentum is only a shade, and Syracuse 

Beneath her soft blue sky sleeps out her doom. 
The hard metal alone, obeying Love docilely, 
Still, on medals of silver, retains in its bloom 
The immortal beauty of the virgins of Sicily. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

May 1, 1910. 

34" 



XXXIV. 
MICHAEL ANGELO. 

(Certe, il 6tait hantd d'un tragique tourment,) 
Josb-Maria db HbrBdia. 

Surely, he was haunted by a tragic torment, 
When in the Sistine, and far from Roman fetes, 
Solitary, he painted sibyls and prophets, 

And on the somber wall, The Last Judgment. 

Titan, whom desire chained to deeds most high, 
Within he heard unceasing lamentation 
For country and glory and love and their negation ; 

He felt that all things die, the dream a lie. 

So those heavy giants, weary of bloodless power, 
Those slaves in bonds unloosed to their last hour, 
How he has twisted them in uncouth fashion; 

And in marbles cold, where his lofty soul held sway, 
How he has made tremble with a mighty passion 
The wrath of a god who is conquered by clay! 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, May 7, 1910. 



Note: In attempting these translations from Heredia I have followed his 
ideas and rhythm as closely as possible but was compelled to break the 
octave into quatrains. In some verses I have used the English penta- 
meter, but wherever I could I have followed the French hexameter. 

342 



XXXV. 

OBLIVION. 

(I,e temple est en ruine au haut du promontoire.) 
Jose-Maria dB HbrBdia. 

The temple in ruin stands on the high promontory, 

And Death, upon this tawny ground, has mingling strown 
Heroes in bronze and goddesses in sculptured stone, 

Of whom the lonely herbage buries the glory. 

Only at times a herdsman leading his bulls to drink, 
With his conch, in which sobs an antique refrain, 
Filling the calm heavens to the rim of the main, 

Outlines his sable form on the infinite azure's brink! 

Maternal and kind to the ancient gods is the Earth, 
For one sees each spring-time, vainly eloquent, 
With the broken capitals a green acanthus blent. 
But man, esteeming the dream of his elders little worth, 
In the depth of nights serene, without trembling hears 
The voice of the sea, lamenting the sirens with tears. 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

Finished May 29, 19 10. 
343 



XXXVI. 

STOICISM. 

(Sois fort, tu seras libre; accepte la souffrance) 
Louis Menard. 

Be strong, thou shalt be free; accept the sufferance 

Which makes thy courage great and pure; hold kingly state 
In the inner world, and follow thy conscience, 

That infallible god, within each one innate. 
Dost hope that those who by their providence 

Do guide the golden spheres, for thee will violate 
The universe? Go to! Endure in silence, 

Strive to be a man, to accomplish thy fate. 

Only the great gods know if the soul be immortal; 
But the just man toils at their work eternal, 

Be it but for a day, leaving the future to those on high, 
Not envying them the least, because, for justice 
He offers freely his life a sacrifice, 
While a god can neither suffer nor die. 

(Reveries d'un paien mystique.) 



At 1460 Belmont Street, 

June 20, 1 9 10. 

344 



XXXVII-XXXIX. 
THE VISION OF KHEM. 

Jose-Maria de Heredia. 

I. 

(Midi. I/air brule et sous la terrible lumiere) 

Midday. The air burns, and under the terrible glare 
The ancient flood rolls sluggishly its waves of lead ; 
Blinding from the zenith falls the daylight dead, 

To wrath of the pitiless Phr6 Egypt is bare. 

The colossean sphinxes, who never have closed their eyes, 
Outstretched on flanks deep billowed in yellow sand, 
With a long mysterious gaze survey the land 

Where towering to heaven the monoliths arise. 

Only afar specking the sky serene and white, 
The gypaetes wheel endlessly their flight; 
The flame's immensity lulls man and beast. 

Crackles the burning soil, and the bronze Anubis 
Impassive in the heart of this ardent feast 
Silently barks to the sun his noon-day bliss. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

March 28, 191 1. 
345 



II. 

(1)3. lune sur le Nil, splendide et ronde, luit.) 

The moon on the Nile shines splendid and round ! 

And lo, in the ancient necropolis a stirring shows, 

There, where each king keeping the hieratic pose 
Lies under the funeral wrappings pitched and wound. 
As in days of the Rameses, a whole people in sight, 

Innumerous and still, forming the mystic stream, 

The throng imprisoned in a granitic dream, 
Falls into line, deploys, and marches in the night. 

Stepping down from the walls broidered with hieroglyphs, 

They follow the Bari borne by the pontiffs 

Of Ammon Ra, the mighty god of the sun-disk's sweep, 
And the sphinxes, and rams engirt the vermeil disk to keep, 

Dazzled and all at once, standing erect on their griffes, 
With a bound awake from their eternal sleep. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

March 29, 191 1. 
346 



III. 

(Et la foule grandit plus innombrable encor.) 

A more innumerous throng swarms ever into sight : 
For the somber hypogaeum, with its couches in rows, 
Is bare; and on the cartouches the space deserted knows 

That the sacred hawks have begun again their flight. 

Beasts, people, and kings, they go. The uraeus of gold 
Around the fierce brows glittering, undulant dips ; 
But the thick bitumen seals the meager lips. 

At their head, Hor, Knoum, Ptha, Neith, Hathor: the great 
gods old, 

Then all of those who are led by Toth of the Ibis head, 
Clad in the schenti, coiffed with the pschent, for ornament 
The lotus blue. The pomp, errant and triumphal, flows 
Undulantly in the horror of the temples dead, 
And on the cold pavement of the halls, resplendent, 
The moon lengthens strangely the gigantic shadows. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Evening of March 31, 191 1. 
347 



XL. 

MAY-TIME. 

(From Giovanni Marradi's "Questa, divino maggio, immensa e 

varia") 

Divine May time! This manifold broadwayed 
Festal of flowers, of swallows, and of sun, 

And this measureless murmuring of the air, 
So full of odors from rose and violet won, 
Cradles and lulls in centenary shade 
Of greenwood ways, and on meadows rich arrayed, 
This soul of mine, that lone as a solitaire, 
Of other murmurs, and other words, dreams on. 

Dreams the soul, and beholds a splendor upstart 
Of visions and raptures — dreams and is carried away 
By an ardent eye where light of love holds sway; 
And smiled upon by love my youthful strife 
Is renewed, and forth from the veins to the heart 
There courses in me a quickening wave of life. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

March 26, 191 1. 
348 



XLI. 
FOR HELEN. 

(Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, a la chandelle,) 
Ronsard (1524-1585.) 

When you shall be grown old, evenings, by candle-flare, 
Down set beside the fire, winding and spinning, 
You'll say, chanting my songs, and o'er them marveling : 

" Ronsard, he sung of me, in days when I was fair." 

Such news astir, you then will have no maid of care, 
Though half asleep she be under hard laboring, 
Who shall not at the fame of Ronsard wakening 

Heap blessings on your name praise makes immortal there. 

And buried then, a boneless ghost whom no man knows, 
Among the myrtle-crowned, shall I take my repose; 
While you a woman old shall crouch beside the fire, 
Regretting love I bore and your high-flown disdain. 
Take then my word, live now, nor wait to-morrows vain, 
Gather to-day, to-day, the rose of life's desire. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

June 23 and 29, 1912. 
349 



XLII. 

MARSYAS. 

(L,es pins du bois natal que charmait ton haleine) 
Jose-Maria de Heredia. 

The pines of the natal wood that charmed heard thy strain 

Have not burned thy body, O unfortunate ! 

Thy bones are dissolved, and thy blood knows the fate 
Of the waters the mountains of Phrygia pour to the plain. 
The jealous Citharist, pride of the Hellenic day, 

With his plectrum of iron has broken thy reeds 

Which, conquering the lions, showed to the birds their needs; 
Naught now remains of the chaunter of Celasnae. 

Naught but a bloody shred fluttering from the yew-tree bole 
Where they bound him to flay him, a living soul. 
O cruel God, O cries! Voice lamentable and tender! 

No, you shall hear no more, under a finger too kind, 
The flute die away by the shores of Meander — 
For the skin of the Satyr is the sport of the wind. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

August 24, 25, 1912. 
35° 



XLIII. 

SUR LE LIVRE DES AMOURS DE 
PIERRE DE RONSARD. 

(Jadis plus d'un atnant, aux jardins de Bourgueil,) 
Jose -Maria de Heredia. 

More than one lover of old, in Bourgueil's garden-side, 

More than one name has graved in the bark, gashing it apart, 
And under the gold of the Louvre's high ceilings more than 
one heart 

At the flash of a smile has trembled with pride. 

What matters ? Nothing has told their transport or their defeat ; 
Between four planks of oak they moulder one and all, 
And no one has disputed, under their grassy pall, 

For their silent dust with the oblivion of the winding sheet. 

Maria, Helen, proud Cassandra : Life ends in sorrow. 
Your beautiful bodies would be but a senseless clay 
— The roses and the lilies have no to-morrow — 

If Ronsard's hand by Seine or blonde Loire in story, 
Had not tressed for your brows, immortally, 
With the myrtles of Love the laurel of Glory. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

Sunday, August 25, 1912. 
35i 



XLIV. 
GILDED VELLUM. 

(Vieux maitre relieur, Tor que tu ciselas) 
Josij-Maria de Hbredia. 

Old master-binder, the gold that you chased on 
At the back of the book and in the margin's plain, 
In spite of the irons by a firm hand urged, does not retain 

The primal glow — somewhat of the gleaming splendor has gone. 

The inwoven figures that the interlocks bind, 
Themselves from the fine white skin each day efface ; 
'Tis much if my eyes on the covers can trace 

The branch of the ivy which there you have serpentined. 

But this supple ivory of almost diaphanous gleam, 
Marguerite, Marie, and perhaps Diana, as well, 
With their amorous fingers have caressed it of old ; 
And this faded vellum, by Clovis Eve covered with gold, 
Evokes, I do not know by what forgotten spell, 
The soul of their perfume and the shadow of their dream. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

August 28, 29, 30, 1912. 
352 



XLV. 
THE CONCH. 

(Par quels froids Oceans, depuis combien d'hivers,) 
Jose-Maria de Heredia. 

For how many winters, through what Oceans cold, 
— Who will ever know, frail and pearly Shell ! — N 
The surge, the currents, and the mountainous tidal swell, 

Thee, in the hollows of their green abysses rolled? 

Under the sky, to-day, far from briny, ebbing plain, 
Thou hast made thyself soft bed on the golden sand. 
But thy hope is vain. Disconsolate and grand, 

In thee forevermore groans the voice of the main. 

My soul has become a sonorous prison cell : 
As still in thy coiled chambers ebb and swell 
The plaint of the refrain of the ancient clamor; 

So from the innermost deeps of this heart too full of Her, 
Dull, slow, aimless, and yet eternally astir, 
Grumbles in me the stormy and distant rumor. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

September 7, 191 2. 
353 



XLVI. 
A GOTHIC WINDOW. 

(Cette verriere a vu dames et hauts barons) 
Josis-Maria db HerBdia. 

This painted window hath seen dames and high barons 
A-glitter with pearl and gold, flame-color, and azure, 
For consecration bend, beneath the august dexter, 

The pride of their helmet-crests and of their chaperons, 

When forth they went to noise of horn or of clarions, 
Short sword in hand, the gerfalcon or the saker, 
Toward the plain or the wood, Byzant' or Saint- Jean d'Acre, 

Setting out for the Crusade or for the flight of herons. 

To-day, the seigniors by the side of the chatelaines, 
With slender hunting dog beside their long poulaines, 
Are stretched upon the slabs of marble black and white; 
Voiceless, gestureless, deaf, they lie upon their tombs, 
And with their eyes of stone, wherein is no eye-sight, 
Behold the rose of the panel-window that ever blooms. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

October 29, 19 12. 
354 



XLVII. 
A RISING SEA. 

(Le soleil semble un phare a feux fixes et blancs,) 
Jose-Maria de Heredia. 

The sun a beacon seems whose fires are fixed and white. 
From Raz to Penmarc'h entire the sea-shore fumes, 
And lone against the wind which ruffles up their plumes, 

Athwart the storm the sea-gulls wavering hold their flight. 

One after other tost, with a muffled thunder roar, 
The waves, a glaucous green beneath their frothy comb, 
With furious upspringings break in misty foam, 

Pluming afar the streaming reefs of ocean shore. 

And I have let rush on the flood-tide of my thought, 
Dreams, hopes, regrets for strength dispersed to naught, 
Till nothing now remains but a bitter memory. 

The ocean has spoken to me with a voice fraternal, 
For the same clamor that rises still from the sea 
Ascends from man to the gods, vainly eternal. 



At 1474 Belmont Street, 

October 29, 1912. 

355 



XLVIII. 
MAY-TIME IN FLORENCE. 

(From Giovanni Marradi's" Or die Firenze, de'beisolial raggio,") 

Now that our Florence glows in the sun's fair ray, 
And rosy blooms their fragrances exhale, 
And all her marbles gleam, and all the vale 

Is full of song, under the heaven of May ; 

Now that her Tuscan tongue triumphantly has sway, 
In the May-day song of storied olden time, 
And to the sound of Medicean ballad rhyme 

The wild arboreal gonfalon makes way: 

Most sweet also upon your lips is the flower 

Of eloquence that unto love beguiles, 
Lady, that hast for love genius and dower; 

And here where an eternal glory smiles 
Of arts and roses, here in the roseate hour, 

On a fragrant hymn, life wings to Elysian isles. 



356 



XLIX. 
THE SPRING. 

NYMPHIS AVG. SACRVM. 

(L'autel git sous la ronce et l'herbe enseveli;) 

Jose-Maria de Heredia. 

Thorn-hid, the altar lies where grasses interlace; 
And the nameless fountain tells its melancholy tale, 
In plaintive accents, drop by drop, to the lonely vale : 
It is the nymph who wails her aye-forgotten grace. 

The mirror vain whereon no ripple leaves its trace 

Is scarcely surface-broken by a flight of dove, 

And the moon, alone, bending down from the dark heaven above, 

Sometimes still sees reflected there a wan white face. 

Therein at times his thirst a wandering shepherd slakes. 
He drinks, and pours upon the roadway's antique stone 
From hollow of his hand the water that remains. 

The hereditary sign unconsciously he makes, 
And the libatory vase remains to him unknown, 
That with its cup the Roman cippus still retains. 



October i-io, 19 14. 

357 



L. 
THE ATHLETE. 

(Je suis initio, je connais le mystere) 

IvOUIS MENARD. 

Initiate, I know the mystery of life: 

'Tis an arena where immortal birth 

Rewards the fray, and wishing birth and life on earth, 

Freely I plunge into the close-locked strife. 

The heroes half-divine have suffered and have fought 

Their lineal triumphant place in heaven to gain : 

Let then by manly strife and austere pain, 

Firm as the bronze is tempered, my free will be wrought! 

Our metempsychoses let us follow unafraid; 
Under the eyes of our dead who reach to us a hand, 
Mount the hard path that leads to the summit land. 

They will receive, from the height of their Godhead attained, 
In the starry Olympus their courage has gained, 
The soul that strives as they strove, undismayed. 

(Reveries d'un paien mystique.) 



November 10, 1914. 

358 



LI. 
HOMER. 

(E sempre a te co '1 sole e la feconda 
Primavera . . . .) 

GiosuB Carducci. 

With coming of the sun and fullness of the spring 
I turn again to thee and to thy song, 
Divine old man, around whose temples cling 
The starry lights that to immortal youth belong. 
Let the daughter of the Sun her incantation sing, 
Tell me the tale of blond Calypso's cave, 
Tell of Nausicaa and the mantles of the king, 
Her sire, joyously washed in the fair wave. 

Tell me — Nay, do not tell ! Let the Cumean judges know 

The earth is made an unclean judgment place, 

That kings are vile, the gods a brutish race: 

And if thou should' st to this our world returned be, 

A Glaucus now I could not find for thee : 

To thee, O vagabond, none would a penny throw ! 



November 21, 19 14. 

359 



LII. 
VIRGIL. 

(Come, quando su' campi arsi la pia 
Luna. . . .) 

GiosuE Carducci. 

As when, upon parched fields, her pity strong, 
The moon from heaven the summer coolness pours, 
The while the rivulet between its narrow shores 
In white light scintillant is murmuring along; 
And secret nightingale forth from her leafy doors 
Floods the vast heaven with melodious song, 
listening, the wanderer recalls the throng 
Of golden curls he loved, and time forgot restores; 
And the bereaved mother sorrowing vainly 
Turns her eyes from a grave to the shining sky 
In whose diffused light the soul finds ease; 
The while the mountains and the far sea-line 
Give back cool winds that sigh among the mighty trees- 
Such is thy verse to me, poet divine! 



November 21, 1914. 

360 



LIU. 
ALASTOR. 

(Le decouragement, la fatigue et l'ennui) 

Louis M&nard. 

Upon my soul discouragement, fatigue, ennui 

Lay hold, before th' implacable resilience 

Of things ; law, destiny, chance, providence, 

Some evil power, 'gainst which I can do naught, crushes me. 

Perhaps the demon souls of those that formerly 
I harmed, somewhere in another existence, 
Invisible in the air surround me in the silence 
And for the evil then take vengeance now on me. 

Whate'er their numbers are, whate'er their strength, 
I would behold them face to face; a form, at length, 
My evil destiny should take — -I will not run ; 

I cannot always struggle thus within the shadow, 
If expiation must be made, then let me go, 
Like Ajax proud, to fight and die in the sun ! 

(Reveries d'un paien mystique.) 



November 28, 1914. 

36' 



uv. 
ERINNYES. 

(Je sais que toute joie est une illusion,) 

Louis M&nard. 

I know that every joy is an illusion, 
That for each one there must be made stern recompense, 
And that I ought to bless the stubborn providence 
Who now on me imposes trial and expiation. 

Barren regrets, the joyous lying sense, 
Attain not to the pure and tranquil region 
Where the sage is lulled, free from passion, 
In the serenity of his intelligence. 

I know, but yet I keep in memory 

A dazzling dream, that never can be dreamed again, 

Neither beyond, nor in this world of men. 

Angel, Demon, God, for me no one avails; 

I've lost a joy beside which bliss of heaven pales, 

And nevermore will it be given back to me. 

(Reveries d'un paien mystique.) 



November 28, 1914. 

362 



I<V. 
DANTE. 

Giosue Carducci. 

Dante, whence doth it come that speech and prayer 

In adoration rise when thy proud face is seen, 

That bent above the verse which made thee lean 

The sun leaves me, and the new dawn still finds me there? 

For me Lucia's prayer remains unplead, 
Matilda's healing bath a thing afar, 
And Beatrice to the sacred lover wed 
In vain ascends to God from star to star. 

Thy holy empire odious is; and the crown 

By a spade upturned might have covered the brow 

Of thy good Frederick in Olona's plains. 

Empire and church are a sorrowful ruin now, 

O'er which soars thy song till echoing heaven sends it down. 

Jove perishes! The poet's hymn remains! 



February 15, 1915. 

363 



LVI. 
THE GULF. 

(Pascal avait son gouffre, avec lui se mouvant.) 

Charles Baudelaire. 

Pascal had his dread deep that journeyed on with him. 
Alas! All is abyss — action, desire, dream 
And speech! And o'er my flesh that creeps I feel, grim, 
And many a time, the wind of terror stream! 

Above, below, everywhere, the deep, the strand, 

The silence, the frightful fascinating space . . . 

A multiform nightmare, God ceaselessly doth trace 

On the background of my nights, with His unerring hand. 

As one who fears a great hole, I am afraid of sleep, 

Full of vague horror, leading one knows not whither— this deep ; 

Out of all my windows only infinity I see, 

And my spirit by vertigo ever annoyed 

Longs for the insensibility of the void. 

— Ah! Prom Numbers and from Beings never to be free! 

(Les Fleurs du mal.) 



364 



EVIL 
TO DANTE ALIGHIERI. 

(Dal mondo scese ai ciechi abissi, e poi,) 

Michael Angelo. 

He descended from Earth to the blind abysses, and then, 
The two Infernos seen, guided by his great thought, 
Ascended living unto God, and brought, 
In Earth's true light, his message unto men, 

Star of high valor, whose radiance the hidden 
Eternities to our blind eyes unfurled, 
And had, at last, reward the wicked world 
Oft gives unto the most heroic men. 

Of Dante crudely was the labor known, 
And fair desire, by that ungrateful race 
Who only unto just men stinted grace. 

But were I such as he ! born to like fate, 
For his harsh exile, being to his virtue grown, 
I would exchange the world's most blessed state. 



365 



LVIII. 
THE ABYSS. 

(Je suis l'esprit, vivant au sein des choses mortes.) 
Victor Hugo.* 

MAN. 

I am the spirit living in the bosom of dead things. 

When doors are closed I forge the keys; 

I make the lion retreat toward the desert; 

I call myself Bacchus, Noah, Deucalion; 

I call myself Shakespeare, Hannibal, Caesar, Dante; 

I am the conqueror ; I hold the flaming sword, 

I enter, frightening the shadow I pursue 

In all the terrors and in all the nights. 

I am Plato, I see; I am Newton, I discover. 

From the owl I bring forth Athena; from the wolf, 

Rome; and the Eagle has said: Do thou go first! 

I have Christ in my sepulcher and Job on my dung heap. 

I live! Level in my two hands I bear 

Soul and body ; I am man, master at last and free ! 

I am the ancient Adam ! I love, I know, I feel ; 

I have taken the tree of life in my strong hands ; 

I shake it joyously above my head. 



*"La Legeude des Siecles." 

367 



As though I were the tempest wind, 

I shake its branches, laden with oranges of gold, 

And I cry: "Come hither, nations! take, and eat!" 

And on their brows I make the apples fall; 

Because for me — my sons, all men — knowledge, 

Thy sap, in waves descends from the kindly heavens, 

For life is thy fruit, eternity, thy root! 

All germinates, all grows, the fiery furnace spreads. 

■ 

As red in a forest the conflagration runs, 

The fair ruddy progress, eye fixed on the azure, 

Marches, and in marching devours the past. 

I will, all things obey, matter inflexible 

Yields; I am almost equal to the great Invisible; 

Hills, I make the wine as He makes the honey; 

Like Him I hurl globes into the heaven. 

I make a palace of that which was my jail; 

From pole to pole I string a living thread; 

On the wing of the lightning I speed the mind; 

I bend the bow of Nimrod, sacred bow of iron, 

And the arrow which hisses and the arrow which flies, 

The arrow I send to the end of the world, is my word. 

I make Rhine, Ganges, and Oregon talk together 

Like three travelers in the same wagon. 



Distance is no more. Of the old giant Space 

I have made a dwarf. I go, and, before my daring, 

The dark jealous Titans raise their tarnished front; 

Prometheus, on Caucasus bound, utters a cry, 

Beyond measure astonished when Franklin steals the thunderbolt ; 

Fulton, whom a Jupiter once would have crushed to powder, 

Mounts Leviathan and traverses the sea; 

Galvani calm extorts from death a bitter smile; 

Volta seizes the sword of the archangel 

And dissolves it; the world trembles at my voice and changes. 

Cain dies, the future resembles the young Abel ; 

I reconquer Eden and I finish Babel. 

Nothing without me. Nature roughed out, I complete her. 

Earth, I am thy king ! 

THE EARTH. 

Thou art only my vermin. 
Sleep, heavy want, fever, subtle fire, 
Abject belly, hunger, thirst, vile stomach, 
O'erwhelm thee, black fugitive, with countless infirmities 
And, old, thou art a specter, and dead, a shadow. 



369 



Thou goest thy way to the ashes! I remain in the light; 

I have always the springtime, the dawn, blossoms, and love, 

I am younger after millions of years. 

I fill the astonished beasts with dreamy instincts, 

From the acorn I bring forth an oak, from the apple seed a fruit. 

I pour myself, somber urn, on the blades of grass, on the pine tree, 

On the clustered vine, on the wheats that yield the sheaves. 

Like superb sisters, hand joined to hand, 

On my face, where the shadows fall, where the daylight gleams, 

The twelve hours of the day, the twelve hours of the night 

Dance incessantly a sacred rondeau. 

I am source and chaos; I bury, I create. 

When the morning was born in the azure, I was there. 

Vesuvius is my work-shop and Hecla my forge; 

I redden the high chimneys of Etna. 

In stirring Cuzco, I move the Pyrenees. 

I have for slave a star; when evening comes, 

Casting its black veil over one of my sides, 

I have my lamp, the moon, with its human face, to light me; 

And if some assassin, in an age-old forest, 

Toward the surest shadow, and the craggiest spot, 

Has fled, I follow him with this masque of fire. 

I people the air, the flame, the wave; and my breath 



370 



Creates the bat, as it creates the whale; 
As I make the worm, so I bring forth typhons. 
A living globe, I am clothed with deep waves 
With forests and with mountains, as with an armor. 

SATURN. 

What weak voice is this that murmurs? 

Earth, why turn in thy restricted field, 

Grain of sand, by a grain of ash companioned? 

I, I trace in the vast azure an enormous circle; 

Space with terror sees my deformed beauty ; 

My ring, which purples the paleness of the nights, 

Like the golden balls by the juggler criss-cross thrown, 

Hurls, mingles, and returns seven colossal moons. 

THE SUN. 

Silence in the deep of the heavens, planets, my vassals ! 
Peace ! I am the herdsman, you are the beasts. 
Like two carts 'neath one portal, side by side, 
In my least volcano Saturn with the Earth 
Would enter in nor touch the crater's walls. 
Chaos ! I am the law. Dirt ! I am the fire. 
Contemplate me ! I am the life wherein you live, 
The sun, the everlasting storm of light. 



37i 



SIRIUS. 

I hear the atom speaking. Away with you, sun, dust-speck, 

Be still! Be still, phantom, species of brightness! 

Herdsmen whose flocks flee in the immensity, 

Obscure globes, I am less haughty than you. 

How proud you are, O keeper of planets, 

For seven or eight muttons that you pasture in the azure! 

As for me, I carry vast and pure, in my august orbit, 

A thousand spheres of fire, the least with a hundred moons. 

Dost thou even know it, maggot who questions me? 

What profits it me to shine upon this dwarf? 

The pigmy star does not even see the giant star. 

ALDEBARAN. 

Sirius sleeps ; I see ! He scarcely so much as stirs. 
Three suns have I, one white, one green, one red; 
The center of a whirlwind of frenzied worlds, 
Chained by an invisible chain they turn 
So quickly, that a drunken flame appears to pass, 
And the lightning says : I cannot follow them. 

ARCTURUS. 

I have four turning suns, a quadruple hell, 
And their four rays make but one single flame. 



372 



THE COMET. 

Make way for the bird-like comet, terror of the deep nights ! 
Tremble ! I pass. Each one of you, O worlds, 
O suns! is to me only a mustard seed! 

THE GREAT BEAR. 
A mysterious arm holds me forever raised; 
Of the pole I am the candlestick, seven-branched, 
Like foot-soldiers, the sword upon the shoulder, 
My fires watch the bounds of the void where all things end ; 
The worlds sown from the nadir to the zenith, 
Under all the equators and under all the tropics, 
Say to themselves: "We see the tip of their pikes; 
They are the black guardians of the monstrous pole." 
The tenebrous ether, full of wandering globes, 
Knows not who I am, and in the ruddy night 
He spies at me, while I, the brightness, keep my watch. 
He sees me, the immense enlightener, advance; 
He rouses and, trembling, listens with horror, 
To hear the tramp of my invisible steeds. 
He hurls at me wild and terrible names, 
And sees in me the beast wandering in the heavens. 



373 



Now we are the North, the torch-lights, the eyes, 

Seven living eyes, having suns for eyeballs, 

The eternal torches of the eternal shades. 

I am Septentrion who appears to you. 

Sirius with all his worlds would be 

Not even a sparkle in my least furnace. 

Between two of my fires a hundred worlds are at ease. 

I dwell on the radiant summits of the night. 

The furnace-fiery comets themselves would never 

Dare to touch with the flames of their tails 

My rolling chariot in the deeps of the blue. 

I do not even see that star which spoke. 

The stars of the heavens go and come down there, 

Drawing their spheres of gold and their faithful moons, 

And I, if I began to move in the midst of them, 

In the fields of the ether obedient to my splendor, 

My wheel would crush all of these ant-like suns ! 

THE ZODIAC. 
And what then is thy wheel by the side of mine? 
From whatsoever point in the sky light comes, 
It strikes 'gainst me, the capstan of the abyss. 



374 



I say to the suns: "Go thou, thy way, and thou come back. 

It is thy turn, thou goest forth, I send thee!" 

For I exist not simply that one may see 

Forever, in the fierce and flaming azure, 

The bull, the ram, and the lion, fleeing 

Before the monstrous hunter Sagittarius; 

I plunge a bucket profound into the wells of mystery, 

I am the enormous wheel-work whence descends 

The invisible order to the bottom of the dazzling gulf. 

Sacred heaven, if eyes could have entered 

Into thy wonder, and into the measureless horror, 

Perhaps, in the gear where I am, they would see, 

Like the black Ixion of a divine Phlegethon, 

Some fearful damned, some vast soul in pain, 

Recommencing and never ending a vain ascent, 

And, quitting the star that flees for the star that comes, 

Climb the sinister ladder of the night! 

THE MILKY WAY. 

Millions, millions, and millions of stars! 

In the frightful shade and under the sacred veils, 

I am the splendid forest of constellations. 



375 



It is I who am the heaps of eyes and of rays, 

The unheard of and gloomy deeps of lights. 

Still overflowing with the primal effluvia, 

My luminous abyss is your source of all. 

O stars below, I am so far from you 

That my vast archipelago of motionless splendors, 

My heap of suns, is, for your feeble eyes, 

In the bottom of heaven, a mournful desert where sound dies, 

Only a few red ashes scattered in the night ! 

But, O creeping and heavy globes, what terror 

For him who could penetrate my living light, 

For him who, close, could see my vermilion cloud ! 

Each point is a star, and each star is a sun. 

So many stars, so many strange diverse 

Humanities, approaching demons, approaching angels, 

Whose planets make so many nations ; 

A group of worlds, all a prey to the passions, 

Circles around each one of my flaming suns; 

In each humanity are hearts and souls, 

Deep mirrors open to the universal eye, 

In each heart is love, in each soul is heaven! 



376 



All this is born, dies, grows, decreases, multiplies. 
The light casts it forth and the shadow is full of it. 
In the gulf, under me, dazzled by my dawn, 
Globes, grains of light in the distance blossomed, 
Thou, Zodiac, and you straying comets, 
Trembling, you traverse the pallid distances, 
And your rumors are like vague clarions, 
And I have more of suns than you have gnats. 
My immensity lives radiant and fecund. 
Sometimes I know not if the remnant of the world, 
Wandering in some corner of the desolate firmament, 
May not have vanished in my radiance. 

THE NEBULA. 

To whom then speakest thou, far passing cloud? 
We scarcely hear thy voice in the gulfs of space. 
We distinguish thee only as a nimbus obscure 
In the most lost corner of the most nocturnal azure. 
Let us shine on in peace, we whiteners of the darkness, 
Spectral worlds hatched in the mournful chaos, 
Having neither austral nor boreal pole, 



377 



We, the realties living in the ideal, 

Worlds on worlds, whence flow the immense swarm of dreams, 

Dispersed in the ether, that ocean without shores 

Whose wave to its confines has never returned ; 

We the creations, isles of the unknown ! 

INFINITY. 
Multiple being lives in my somber unity. 

GOD. 
I have but to breathe, and all would be a shadow. 

November 26, 1853. 




373 



L'ENVOI. 

(Woods Hole, Mass.) 

These songs are done! Farewell, my dear, farewell! 
Out of thine ashes grow all lovely things 
That bud and bloom, or rise on joyous wings, 

Or in the beryl sea-deep twilight dwell ! 

Thy spirit unto mine a quickening flame 
Of high resolve, an impulse unto good, 
A hand that never tires — all this I would, 

Till hungering souls through me shall bless thy name. 

So shalt thou live in other lives on earth, 
And from thy dwelling place within God's heart 
Find all is good! There may each have his part, 

And find in Nature's God divine re-birth. 

Then be with earth and sea forevermore 
Thy sacred ashes part of this dear shore ! 



On train, New York to Washington, 
December 9, 19 13. 

379 



I shot an arrow into the air. 

—Longfellow. 







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